I am Director of Entitlement and Budget Policy for the Heartland Institute, Senior Advisor for Entitlement Reform and Budget Policy at the National Tax Limitation Foundation, General Counsel for the American Civil Rights Union, and Senior Fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis. I served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under President George H.W. Bush. I am a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and the author most recently of America's Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb (New York: Harper Collins, 2011).
I write about new, cutting edge ideas regarding public policy, particularly concerning economics.

Fakegate: The Obnoxious Fabrication of Global Warming

Heartland President Joe Bast said in a statement on the episode, “The stolen documents were obtained by [a then] unknown person who fraudulently assumed the identity of a Heartland board member….Identity theft and computer fraud are criminal offenses subject to imprisonment. We intend to find this person and see him or her put in prison for these crimes.”

While I am not a scientist, and write primarily on economics, tax policy and budget issues, I have been fascinated over the years by Heartland’s work on climate change. I’ve attended the Heartland global warming conferences and read through the organization’s publications on the issue. What has fascinated me is how the objective, dispassionate scientific presentations so thoroughly demolish the intellectual case for catastrophic man-caused global warming. In contrast, as the comments to this article will no doubt show, the case for catastrophic global warming is no more than appeals to authority (“the United Nations says it’s true!”) or ad hominem attacks.

The bottom line is that the temperature records are not consistent with the theory that human “greenhouse” gas emissions are the primary cause of global warming. Those records do not show temperatures rising in conjunction with such ever rising emissions as the globe increasingly industrializes. Instead, the temperature record shows an up and down pattern that follows the pattern of natural influences on global temperatures, such as cyclical sunspots and solar flares, and cycles of ocean churning from warmer to colder temperatures and back, such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO).

Moreover, the incorruptible and objective satellite temperature records show only modest warming starting in the late 1970s, which stopped roughly 10 years ago, with more recent declines. That is consistent with temperature proxy records found in nature, such as tree rings and ice cores. But that diverges significantly from the corruptible and subjectively compiled land based records, the repeated manipulation of which has prompted several prominent climate scientists to call for an investigation. Perhaps Gleick’s skills in falsification can be found more broadly among his colleagues.

In addition, the work of the UN’s IPCC is based on numerous climate models that attempt to project temperatures decades into the future. Those models are all based on the circular assumption that the theory of man caused global warming is true. As 16 world leading climate scientists recently reported in a letter to the Wall Street Journal,

“[A]n important gauge of scientific expertise is the ability to make successful predictions. When predictions fail, we say that the theory is ‘falsified’ and we should look for the reasons for the failure. Shown in the nearby graph is the measured annual temperature of the earth since 1989, just before the first report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Also shown are the projections of the likely increase of temperature, as published in the Summaries of each of the four IPCC reports, the first in the year 1990 and the last in the year 2007.

“From the graph it appears that the projections [of the models] exaggerate, substantially, the response of the earth’s temperature to CO2 which increased by about 11% from 1989 through 2011. Furthermore, when one examines the historical temperature record throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, the data strongly suggest a much lower CO2 effect than almost all models calculate.”

Seems like the models have been falsified.

The likely reason for that failure is that while the models recognize that increased CO2 itself will not produce a big, catastrophic increase in global temperatures, the models assume that the very small amount of warming caused by increased CO2 will result in much larger temperature increases caused by positive feedbacks. The real, emerging science, as the Heartland publications indicate, is that the feedbacks are more likely to be offset by negative feedbacks, resulting in a much smaller net temperature change. Scientists have pointed out that much higher CO2 concentrations deep in the earth’s history, as shown by proxy records, did not result in catastrophic temperature increases, a very powerful rebuttal to the idea today’s relatively low CO2 levels could trigger catastrophic global warming.

The results of the latest, most advanced data collection also suggest that CO2 is not responsible for the modest global warming of the late 20th century. The UN models agree with established science that if human greenhouse gas emissions were causing global warming, there should be a hot spot of higher temperatures in the troposphere above the tropics, where collected concentrations would have the greatest effect, and the warming would show up first. This is known in the literature on climate science as “the fingerprint” for man caused global warming. But data from global weather satellites and more comprehensive weather balloons show no hotspot, and no fingerprint, which means no serious global warming due to human greenhouse gas emissions. QED.

Moreover, satellites also have been measuring the energy entering the earth’s atmosphere from the sun, and the energy escaping back out to space. If the theory of man caused global warming is correct, then the energy escaping back out should be less than the energy entering, as the greenhouse gases capture some of the energy in the atmosphere. But the satellite data show negligible difference.

The real cutting edge in climate science was publicly exposed recently in a book by one of the long time leaders of the German environmental movement, Fritz Vahrenholt, in his new book, The Cold Sun. The book expresses the growing concern among more careful real climate scientists, rather than political scientists, that trends in solar activity portend a return to the cold, limited agricultural output, and widespread disease of the Little Ice Age, or even a more full blown, overdue by historical standards, real ice age.

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The most shocking thing to come out of this is the way the alarmists continue to insist that the sceptics are well funded, when it is the alarmists that are rolling in money. As for the myth of BIG-OIL, there is not one of the big five oil companies that isn’t involved in some way in wind … you can check that out in five minutes looking on the internet.

So, for alarmists to point to the Heartland docs and suggest they prove the sceptics have massive funding, is a bit like point to concentration camps in Germany and claiming: “look it proves just how much damage the allied war of terror against nice Germans has caused”.

It is just totally bizarre. It it trying to turn reality of its head and then put a pink tutu on it.

Considering how politicized those government orgs are, I could argue that point. Instead, I will just point out that groups like the Sierra Club, World Wildlife Federation, Green Peace, et al, EACH have budgets two orders of magnitude larger than HI.

And to claim that “Big oil” is realistically involved in wind energy is a farce. They spend pennies on “research” which is more of a public relations campaign than true research. Feel free to Google that one as well.

Potentially more shocking if a larger portion of the public realizes it, is how this same current general accusation begins to look like an outgrowth of an earlier, older accusation, which itself is based on so-called evidence that accusers seem ashamed to show in its full context. I wrote an article about this larger problem at American Thinker earlier this week, “Fakegate Opens a Door: More than meets the eye in the Heartland controversy” which Forbes nicely links to here: http://specials.forbes.com/article/02oOd3b6uA2Sf

No the agencies you mentioned are at the beck and call of politicians that have bought into the scam literally. The loudest voices in washington crying that the sky is falling are all invested heavily in the carbon trading scheme set up by the biggest fraud of political hack of them all Al Gore. They’ve taken a finacial beating as the bottom has literally dropped out of the international “carbon market”. Since their stock in this institution is worthless. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or a double dipping elite climate scientist at a government agency to know that only reserch “confirming” the hysteria gets funding while having the integrity and skeptisism required by ALL legitamate science to point out some of the ludacrous failures of the “proven science” is hazardous to one’s career.

Hansen is giving NASA a black eye. My brother used to work at NASA Aims Reseach center in Mountain View, CA. He did wind tunnel simulations for helicopters, jets and stuff. Back when they did only science.

Hansen should be fired. I worked for a public agency as a civil engineer. I would have been fired for the type of behavior Hansen displays. And my hard earned tax dollars are supporting that clown.

Scientists are supposed to be neutral. But if you look at many of our governmental scientific organizations, they have jumped on board with the IPCC, without really performing any real scientific verification of their own. They have essentially become an advocacy group posing as scientists.

Bottom line. I simply do not trust the IPCC. It should be disbanded. It was a political/environmental movement from its inception.

We need to have fresh scientists without preconceived ideas, or an agenda to re-look at the issues. Too much shady stuff has happened with the IPCC, and they have lost all credibility, in my mind.

For what? Has he done any misconduct as a scientist? Be careful with making any libelous claims. Or do you want him to be punished because you don’t like the results of his research? Should every scientist be fired who does not produce what you would like to hear? And in what way is your rambling about the IPCC linked to this?

Ethics violations. Federal rules prohibit government employees from receiving certain types of income outside their job. Employees are required to file Form 17-60 in writing before any outside activity. And annually, they’re required to submit Form SF 278, after receiving outside compensation.

Secondly, Hansen is a public figure and I can state my opinion of him without fear of libel. I’ll do so now. Hansen is a lying reprehensible human being. He’s a disgrace to the name of science in general and should be fired from NASA for crimes against humanity. How’s that?

Third. How are my ramblings related to the IPCC? Are you serious? Have you not read the history of how the IPCC came about? Hansen was part of the whole activist movement in the 1980′s that led to the establishment of he IPCC. I found the following article on roots of the IPCC. You might find others too. http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/3540/

The IPCC’s history is soundly rooted in political/environmental activism. Another reason I do not trust it. They have an agenda.

The environmental griups that you mention do many other things than advocate for policies that control global warming. Heartland is simply a propaganda outfit. If you want to count budgets that way, you’d have to count the budgets of the Wall Street Journal and Forbes in the denier side of the ledger.

Claiming Hanson is raking in around a million a year in outside income as a government employee isn’t a libelous claim, as it’s proven in the FOIA information NASA released. Truth of the claim is a strong defense against a libel suit.

“Hansen is a lying reprehensible human being. He’s a disgrace to the name of science in general and should be fired from NASA for crimes against humanity. How’s that?”

How’s that? It’s the insane rambling of a denier who disguises his identity, which confirms for me the picture I have about the denier crowd. But what is anonymity good for, if it can’t be used in forums like this one as cover for smearing other people? It’s quite cowardly, though.

George Turner – I’m not seeing the problem here. NASA pays Hansen to do a particular job and he does it. If he’s making a million bucks a year in his spare time, more power to him. What are you, some kind of socialist?

Dallas, I think you’d see the problem if Hansen was using his position at NASA GISS to deny that global warming was occuring while taking in a million dollars a year on the side from Exxon, Mobile, BP, and Shell.

There are rules against government employees using their positions for private benefit because the public likes to know that the people they employ work for the public and aren’t secretly bought by wealthy and powerful special interests. As you may recall, Representative Duke Cunningham, an ace in Vietnam, took money and percs from some defense contractors for his work on the defense committee. He was sentenced to eight years in prison.

The other problem I have with Hansen, and GISS in particular, is the way they keep dropping the temperatures of the 1930′s and 40′s. If the present rate of past temperature adjustments continues the 1940′s could slip into an ice age that could kill millions of the WW-II generation before they have a chance to reproduce, leaving tens of millions of us without ancestors. That would be sad.

The term “climate change denier” is an attempt to assign any ‘doubters’ with the same moral repugnance one associates with Holocaust denial. It is also an affront to those who lost loved ones in the Holocaust.

The term has absolute no place in the process of scientific discovery or debate, and you will find that real science professionals refuse to use such a pejorative term. You will not see the likes of Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. use that term.

People who use that term want to somehow feel morally superior, and the term is an attempt to delegitimize skeptical views and portray them as immoral, stupid, or repugnant.

Equating “climate change” with the “Holocaust” is a cynical attempt to close down debate. The H-word is uttered as a kind of moral absolute that no one could possibly question.

But we do have freedom of speech in this country, so people have the right to use morally repugnant terms.

“The term “climate change denier” is an attempt to assign any ‘doubters’ with the same moral repugnance one associates with Holocaust denial. It is also an affront to those who lost loved ones in the Holocaust.”

The Holocaust will seem like a scraped knee on the playground compared to what climate change has in store for us. We are looking at hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people dead by the time it is done.

However, it is my hope that denialists such as yourself escape from the inevitable anger and violence that will no doubt be visited upon you and those like you from the angry mobs that will be looking for someone to blame. Good luck with that.

The Heartland Institute and people like you are vile. Scientists do not lie and commit fraud for money. Oil companies (and their proxies, a la Heartland) do. Your selfishness, greed and deliberate self-ignorance will not be misunderstood by our grandchildren. Maybe you can come up with some absurd scientific “debate” to explain the following. It will not change the reality of what is happening.

Ocean acidification may be worst in 300 million years: study (AFP) – 8 hours ago WASHINGTON — High levels of pollution may be turning the planet’s oceans acidic at a faster rate than at any time in the past 300 million years, with unknown consequences for future sea life, researchers said Thursday. The acidification may be worse than during four major mass extinctions in history when natural pulses of carbon from asteroid impacts and volcanic eruptions caused global temperatures to soar, said the study in the journal Science. An international team of researchers from the United States, Britain, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands examined hundreds of paleoceanographic studies, including fossils wedged in seafloor sediment from millions of years ago. They found only one time in history that came close to what scientists are seeing today in terms of ocean life die-off — a mysterious period known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum about 56 million years ago. Though the reason for the carbon upsurge back then remains a source of debate, scientists believe that the doubling of harmful emissions drove up global temperatures by about six degrees Celsius and caused big losses of ocean life.

I agree with JRathall: the claims made in this oped are vile. A careful analysis of the “evidence” offered here reveals that NONE of it is from the scientific literature… It’s all innuendo and implication. Even if Gleick faked a document (and I sincerely doubt that), this very article is direct evidence of the obfuscatory agenda of Heartland… It’s exactly the sort of dreck that the documents show Heartland is committed to promulgating. Peter, you aren’t a scientist, and this is quite obvious from your ridiculous use of “Q.E.D.” in an allegedly scientific argument. Scientific proof doesn’t come from logical proofs…it comes from data. (Your only mention of data itin ways that completely obscure the actual import of that data.) rather, this column reeks of a kind ofmedieval scholasticism. You might as well have spent the same number of words “proving” that the earth is flat or that only 200 angels can dance on the head of a pin. you most obviously have no interest whatsoever in science, or “proof,” or truth. You aim to disseminate doubt in the general public, which is what Heartland ALWAYS does through it’s execrable efforts. I think it’s also obvious that your goal is to benefit the polluters… Why else do you care Bout this? Vile, indeed.

Gleick admittedly committed wire fraud, but you wonder how could such a renowned person malign an institution with a forged document? Great argument. How indeed could a self-confessed criminal do such a vile thing?

And you clearly are a not a scientist either.

Scientific proof comes from data! Scientific proof for what? How about a hypothesis. Then one classifies and interprets the data to confirm or deny that hypothesis. Then one draws a conclusion that must be sound and logical for its forgoing premises and evidence.

The IPCC judgement is that AGW is a settled fact regardless of contrary or of absent data, regardless of its rotten and unsound premises and conclusion, regardless of competing data and theories, regardless of its opposition to established and confirmed laws of physics, chemistry, meteorology, and a host of other fields of study, and regardless of observed differences in expected results.

I suppose we do have to look it up in a dictionary. Tell me how is it that an ocean that is strongly alkaline acidifies? Perhaps what you meant to say is that an ocean that is strongly alkaline becomes somewhat less so.

Its the sort of absurdity in which one says in substituting a lighter shade of blue for a deeper that it became greener or greenified. No. It just became a lighter shade of blue.

The oceans are alkaline. Obsolutely true. Weakly Alkaline. And the level of the alkalinity is decreasing. Ph is moving in the acid direction even though it hasn’t crossed the threshold to actually being acid yet. You can play word games about whether this should be called acidification or dealkalinisation if you want but is just very shallow sophistry. If i am in the Southern hemisphere, a few degrees south of the equator but I am travelling north, by your word games I am not allowed to say I am travelling Northerly. What I should say I suppose is that I am travelling de-Southerly.

If that is the level at which you are able to comment here at Forbes, why do you bother.

Oh, and the issue to do with ‘dealkalinisation’ is not related to the actual pH changes themselves – the direct impact of that will be quite small. It is the effect that Carbonic Acid (which is what most CO2 converts into when it dissolves in the ocean) has on the ratio between carbonate and bicarbonate ions in the oceans. And this has a huge impact on creatures that need to use carbonate to form their shells.

the term you are looking for is “neutralize” The oceans are alkaline. Co2 neutralizes the alkalinity. Here’s the thing. Salts of various type cause the ocean’s alkalinity. You think the ocean will run out of salt any time soon?

JRathall -> Ratball How very ‘clever’ of you Mr. Economart. Good to see you are continuing the level of discourse that Mr. Ferrara has started. No worries; it clearly shows the level of reasoning that I’ve come to expect from those seeking to obfuscate the science of global warming. I understand that when you don’t have to the facts on your side you have to resort to name calling to distract from the real issues.

You display typical FUD behavior with a bonus of name calling at the start. You obviously see this as an argument to be won rather than science to be discussed. Even your statement ‘the oceans are alkaline’ is purposely misleading from the fact that PH levels are trending lower due to atmospheric carbon dioxide levels increasing from 200 parts per million up to 392 parts per million.

But it has been proven beyond doubt that at least some ‘climitalogists’, especially self-proclaimed ‘highly-recognized’ ones, DO lie and commit fraud. We can argue whether money is involved – I will point out that THIS IS HOW HE IS MAKING HIS LIVING so he DOES have a monetary interest in GW research being funded – but that doesn’t make much difference.

If the science was beyond question, they would not need to lie, cover-up, refuse to release research data, hide results, etc. If HI were really an ‘evil’ organization, they wouldn’t have to create a fraudulant document to prove it.

Get a clue about whom you are placing your trust – and that is exactly what you are doing when you believe their research. Today, March 2, is the coldest March 2nd in the last 11 years (since appropriate satellite data has been availble). Everyday since Feb 13 has been the coldest. Of course, the scientists using satellites to measure global temps are not part of the same cabal pushing CAGW. And unlike those touting CAGW, they have yet to be shown willing to lie or commit fraud for any reason.

Spencer and Christy who have produced the temperature data to which you probably refer here, published false temperature records based on flawed algorithm over years. And Spencer just recently published a paper, in which cherry picked model data and sea surface temperatures were used to make the claim the climate sensitivity of the models was too high. Including the model data that were left out would have invalidated the claim.

But I guess you believe Spencer and Christy anyhow, and no fraud accusation towards them will be heard from you. Not saying you should accuse them in this way.

And anyone who believes that some coldest days in a row in 11 years would invalidate the scientific arguments for the reality of global warming in any way doesn’t really have a clue.

The term of moving from alkaline towards a lower alkalinity should be ‘neutralization’ The term moving from Acidic to higher acidic should be ‘acidification’ The ocean is moving to neutral. It is not even clear, if CO2 could make it acidic.

Lets just call things what they are. The oceans are alkaline, and strongly alkaline. They are not acidic. The alkalinity may have dropped by a negligible degree, but that is part of a natural variation. All these AGW nuts keep trumpeting this tiny drop as a disaster. I did not know they measured ph levels in the oceans to the thousandth degree back in the 1600s. Now even if they burned all the fossil fuels in existence, the oceans would never become acidic.

Rainwater is slightly acidic. Yes, rainwater. Water flowing into the oceans is acidic, picking up all those minerals as it drains into larger water bodies.

Now there is the threat to the oceans ph. Rainwater and runoff. These are the great perils. But all you can point to is the measly carbon production of man at 25 billion tons and ignore natural production in the vicinity of 700 billion tons. The ocean is a carbon sink. Its full of the stuff. What can we possibly add to its already voluminous numbers?

So these little ocean creatures thrive on carbon. Its what the shell fish are made of. More carbon would mean more ocean creatures I would think. Just as more carbon in the atmosphere means more plant life on land.

Carbon dioxide is not a toxin. Carbon is what every living creature is made of, Glenn. More carbon is good.

Here’s a word game: what does one call the current ph level of the oceans? Alkaline or acidic?

When these AGW morons have more to say besides the endless repetitions of AGW junk, then I might give them some respect. But they just keep on saying the same old fictions without ever discovering reason or judgement.

And the AGW crowd in case you had not noticed have no science. There entire arguments rest on lies such as “98% of climate scientists agree…” or “You are no scientist and can say nothing on the subject..” or “The science is settled”. And just look at the monstrous blunders on the oceans alkalinity.

This is AGW science and scientists at work. Sorry to be blunt, but I have learned well from my opponents.

Scientists have and do commit fraud for money. There have been numerous scams over the years, which you should be and probably are aware of.

Regarding ocean acidification, only in the IPCC documents is such a lack of scientific evidence espoused as a proof. It is simply the unfounded and unproven ramblings of alarmists. They stuck about as many caveats in there as they could. They just don’t know, but are willing to speculate. Even in a plume of CO2, sea life can do just fine. http://www.bairdmaritime.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6171:png-coral-reefs-and-the-bubble-bath&catid=99:walter-starcks-blog&Itemid=123

What current ocean die-off are referring to. The one caused by pollution (other than CO2)? In an unpolluted area near Cuba, the ocean life is beautiful, vibrant and colorful. No sign of a die-off where people haven’t dumped their trash on it. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121177851

How can you attribute the CO2 increase today with a die-off by equating it with asteroid impacts 56 million years ago? Really? When the continents were in a different location than today and ocean currents were interrupted? That die-off?

The evidence you site is incomplete and likely incorrect, and based on speculation and an agenda. As scientists continue to investigate, the information will change, but for now I an satisfied that there is enough doubt remaining to convince me that the science is not settled.

Scientists have and do commit fraud for money. There have been numerous scams over the years, which you should be and probably are aware of.

Regarding ocean acidification, only in the IPCC documents is such a lack of scientific evidence espoused as a proof. It is simply the unfounded and unproven ramblings of alarmists. They stuck about as many caveats in there as they could. They just don’t know, but are willing to speculate. Even in a plume of CO2, sea life can do just fine. http://www.bairdmaritime.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6171:png-coral-reefs-and-the-bubble-bath&catid=99:walter-starcks-blog&Itemid=123

What current ocean die-off are referring to. The one caused by pollution (other than CO2)? In an unpolluted area near Cuba, the ocean life is beautiful, vibrant and colorful. No sign of a die-off where people haven’t dumped their trash on it. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121177851

How can you attribute the CO2 increase today with a die-off by equating it with asteroid impacts 56 million years ago? Really? When the continents were in a different location than today and ocean currents were interrupted? That die-off?

The evidence you cite is incomplete and likely incorrect, and based on speculation with an agenda. As scientists continue to investigate, the information will change, but for now I an satisfied that there is enough doubt remaining to convince me that the science is not settled.

You mentioned the “reality of global warming”? Are you kidding me? That is the stupidest terminology ever. Of course global warming is real. So is global cooling. It is the nature of climate to change.

<i"the reality of Global warming". Well done, “Captain Obvious”.

Any more brilliant observations? I rank that right up there with, “Statistics show that teen pregnancy drops off significantly after age 25″

A recent Scripps Institute study found than the pH levels at any point in the ocean naturally vary widely and rapidly, especially near reefs where it can drop from 8.4 to 7.4 in a day, which is a bigger change than the IPCC’s worst case predictions for the year 2200. Nemo isn’t bothered by the swings.

That Glieck forged the document is inescapable to anyone with the slightest bit of objectivity would have to admit after a cursory glance at the circumstances and the document itself. He even went so far as to cameo himself into the document as being mentioned by heartland as dire threat. What kind of insufferable ass does that? He’s an AGW criminal so why should I be surprised? The only thing vile and filled with innuendo here is you. Typical of many AGW alarmists your arguments have no substance. All of the conclusions that the Mr. Ferrara mentions in the article are meticulously backed up by truly peer and published science as opposed to the Pal review process unearthed by the various climate gate e-mails. Your multi trillion dollar scam is slowly and surely being unraveled by an opposition that gets 1/6,500 of the funding that Big Green throws into maintaining the fiction. You are reduced to the classic ad hominem attacks that true scoundrels always resort to when confronted by the truth.

JRathall, the oceans are salty. There’s no way they’ll ever become acidic. OK? You can sleep easy: the phrase, ‘ocean acidification; is just the latest idiocy from the climate alarmists.

First it was global warming. Then it became CAGW – catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. Then it became climate disruption – which could mean anything. But the plebs are still suspicious about the taxes to be levied to “save the planet” so the latest scare is ‘ocean acidification’.

economart – Sorry, but the term that the scientists are using in their published papers is acidification. Although, of course, sea water is basic. The overall change is from 8.25 to 8.14 between 1751 and 2004. That is, sea water is 30% more acidic now.

economart – Present day ph was measured by sampling at various sites. Read the Royal Society report for yurself here: http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/policy/publications/2005/9634.pdf

Thank God Forbes is working to expose those frauds the Natational Acadamy of Sciences and the U.S Department of Defense who are claiming that climate change is real and a threat. Please continue to supoprt Heartland expose theis and other lies including that smoking cigerettes causes cancer and the Nazis killed 6 million jews. Your truth will set us free.

Thank God indeed Joe, where would we be without Patriots like Peter and Forbes to protect us from the corrosive propaganda of the leftist conspiratorial cabal of the UN? I just hope he doesn’t forget to mention next time their real intentions are to steal our children and boil our pet bunny rabbits.

Do you really think, if they had a choice, the DoD really wants to buy $26 a gallon green jet fuel instead of giving servicemen health care?

The DoD is like any other bureaucracy in many ways. When the king is bought into global warming, the infrastructure finds a way to do what the king will fund. All the federal departments know that is the game, so this is why if you google any federal department, and “green”, you will see a ton of info on (mostly) new programs to serve the king’s fancy. All of these cost money. And 40% of this money is borrowed.

My respect for Forbes just sank like a polar bear through melting sea ice.

The Heartland Institute has zero credibility – just look it up.

The science is settled: climate change is happening and humans are causing it. 98% of climate scientists agree. Climate changes is going to be very bad, folks, and the sooner we reduce carbon emissions the better.

#### Canadian biologist Dr. Mitchell Taylor, one of the foremost authorities on polar bears, says: “We’re seeing an increase in bears that’s really unprecedented, and in places where we’re seeing a decrease in the population it’s from hunting, not from climate change.” Dr. Taylor is a real scientist who actually goes out into the field and tracks, observes, tags, and counts polar bears and other arctic mammals. He has been doing this for over two decades, unlike the computer modelers who are making their dire predictions based on their own theoretical climate scenarios.

and

“Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present,” Taylor said, noting that Canada is home to two-thirds of the world’s polar bears.

and

Taylor also debunked the notion that less sea ice means less polar bears by pointing out that southern regions of the bears’ home with low levels of ice are seeing booming bear populations. He noted that in the warmer southern Canadian region of the Davis Strait with lower levels of ice, a new survey will reveal that bear populations have grown from an estimated 850 bears to an estimated 3000 bears. And, despite the lower levels of ice, some of the bears measured in this region are among the biggest ever on record.

“Davis Strait is crawling with polar bears. It’s not safe to camp there. They’re fat. The mothers have cubs. The cubs are in good shape,” he said, according to a September 14, 2007 article.

He added: “That’s not theory. That’s not based on a model. That’s observation of reality.”

Up here in Canada in 2012, the very real concerns are that polar bears are being pushed to the brink of starvation because of the changing temperature patterns brought on by climate change.

Your 2007 study is five years out of date. And really quite irrelevant.

You can read the latest updates at the CBC news web site and perhaps be better informed than you appear to be: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2012/01/10/mb-starving-polar-bears-manitoba.html

I am up here in Canada. The 2007 study is 5 years old, not 5 years out of date. Has its author, a recognized authority, who studies polar bears not from his computer but actually face to face, retracted his findings? Polar bear populations are growing in this era of imagined AGW, not dwindling. That’s a fact!

Now you wish me to substitute the CBC, the most unscientific, arrogant, unprofessional, leftist, parasitic media organization anywhere in the world for a recognized authority on polar bears.

Now I see how your science works. Now I can surmise as to how you come up with these grossly inane comments.

Interesting sense of Time you work with economart. Because someone said something was happening 5 years ago, (and lets be honest more like 6 to 7 years ago, given the time it takes to do the field work, analyse the results, write a paper and get it published) therefore that thing is still happening now.

So the scientist would have no reason to retract his findings because his findings were about what was happening then. He has made no findings whatsoever about what is happening now.

The process of scientific discovery happens through a rigorous protocol called the scientific method, NOT BY CONSENSUS.

The science barely got off the ground, and is no where close to being settled. Wow, you should notify all those scientists I noted on page 3 of this post to stop with the climate science studies that indicate the IPCC models are wrong.

Ah. The CBC. The most authoritative scientific organization on the planet. Even more authoritative than Heartland Institute.

Secondly, all Canadians should be disqualified as science experts. I mean here we have a country (Canada) whose citizens pour gravy on their french fries. Clearly a sign of lower intelligence, eh? Maybe the brain arteries getting clogged by all those fish and chips, eh? And how can you even count polar bears when you are too busy clubbing all those baby seal to death?

tesuji, nobody disputes that climate changes because it does, all the time. Geologists can tell you more about the climate than ‘climate scientists’ playing with their models. Geologists know, and can prove, that there have been ice ages. That’s climate with a capital C.

I note you said that 98% of climate scientists agree. I suspect you actually meant that 97% of climate scientists agree and are you aware of the provenance of that claim? It’s piss weak. Just 75 scientists out of 77 agreed and that gives you that infamous claim that 97% of climate scientists agree that …

Since you assert geologicst knew it better than climate scientists, saying those could prove there have been ice ages, suggesting climate scientist said anything different, please show me only one climate scientist who has claimed that there hadn’t been any ice ages, or other significant climate changes in the geological past of Earth.

This is one of the typical straw man arguments. As if the fact that there has been natural climate change in the geological past of Earth refutes logically or empiricaly that mankind with its activities has become a climate changing factor itself. As if the fact of natural climate change in the geological past refutes logically or empirically that anthropogenically caused greenhouse gas emissions are changing Earth’s climate now. It doesn’t at all.

So if we are changing the climate, and if our decisions now determine its future state, then the environmentalists have to choose whether to save the whales and kill the cute polar bears or kill the polar bears and save the whales. They cannot do both. One species must suffer horrible deaths by drowning or starvation so the other can live.

So, kind hearted environmentalists who think you get to save all the cute little animals, the rifle is in your hands and you have to shoot either the bear or the whale. You have to make a choice.

Well all the AGW nutjobs or the gorons were proclaiming the extinction of the polar bear in 2007. I imagine they got it all horribly wrong then. And I suppose that with all this global warming caused by man, the polar bear has gone from thriving to extinction in just 5 years.

No, I think the Gorons will go from thriving to extinction in 5 years. Right prediction, wrong species.

I really wish we could stop with all the name calling. It is a big waste of time and annoying. People who think there is AGW have a right to their opinion and view and people who are skeptical of this view, likewise have a right to their view. Neither group is composed of bad people, they have different views. If we tried to listen more to each other, maybe we could hear what the other person is saying.

“Scientists” meaning persons who have been trained in the scientific method and recognized institutions of higher learning and who make a professional effort to follow through on following this method, should receive respect and an open ear to listen to their considered judgments. Yet, being a scientist does not mean you are always right even on subjects you know well and have studied closely. The scientist and engineers at NASA who thought that the chunk of insulation falling from the shuttle tank would not have a significant impact on the shuttle were wrong. That doesn’t mean they are bad people or that their decision was improperly influenced by NASA or anybody else. Likewise, it might be that the “concensus” of AGW is wrong. We must keep open to this possibility. The points raised by Mr. Ferrara should be examined carefully and not dismissed with some statement of your opinion that he is a bad person. I would like to know more about the “feedback” question. Lets have the data, lets have the discussion. I don’t care about who is scoring points by the name calling. I want good information based on facts that we know and when we don’t know the facts, admit that also. We can do better than the name calling type of discussions.

Actually, this article is a perfect metaphor for the intellectual paucity of the anti-climate change crusade.

No doubt a brilliant lawyer, Mr. Ferrera has absolutely no credentials in climatology. That doesn’t prevent him screaming from his bully-pulpit here at Forbes. Here we have a complete non-expert somehow convinced that his views cancel out the research-driven findings of American’s most credible scientific institutions like NASA. Oh really.

The metaphor becomes painful though when Mr. Ferrera suggests to have an independent panel of scientists study the matter. Great idea. Actually it happened last year with leading climate change denier, Richard Muller and the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project, funded by the Koch brothers. Seeking to analyze and double-check the integrity of the IPCC findings and its alleged inconsistencies, Muller instead concluded that the measurements were entirely accurate, forcing him to reverse his views and accept the reality of climate change.

Of course, unlike the lawyer, Ferrera — Muller is a scientists with impeccable credentials with a speciality in studying large data sets — useful for interpreting highly complex dynamic systems like climate.

You can read about the project here: http://berkeleyearth.org/ . Or you can listen to a lawyer versed in doublespeak prattle on in bafflegab about things beyond his comprehension. On that basis, this article is a classic. Well done!

Do you just “haff-read” stuff in the paper as your source? The BEST project has absolutely nothing to do with verifying IPCC “findings”. Please read the source you quoted.

Secondly, Mullers’ new analyisis of historical temperature data has not been peer reviewed. So Mulller’s “impeccable” credentials as a true scientist are zero in my book.

Muller was never a climate change denier. He is on board with the IPCC dogma. If you read the Q & A on his site, he even laughingly tries to claim that the last decade still shows warming. What a joke. Even his own preliminary data indicates no warming from 2001. There have been problems with historical land based temperature sensors, and whether Muller addresses the problems is yet to be seen. Fortunately we have satellite data from the year 1979 that give a more accurate global picture of earth temperatures.

I am not defending Heartland, because they are an advocacy group, and as such, should not have “non scientists” making statements about science.

Muller is obviously well educated in science, but even scientists with “impeccable” credentials let their philosophy cloud their reasoning. Look at the idiot professor Dr. Paul Ehrlich over at Stanford.

Like no warming since one year ago or since the other night. Global warming is a long-term trend that is overlaid with effects by other climate drivers than greenhouse gases and with natural fluctuations. The data records have to be long enough to be able to do a statistically robust trend analysis. The data since 2001 are just not enough data to do such a thing. Therefore, it’s not possible to make a scientifically valid statement about the presence or absence of a global warming trend since the year 2001, or the year 1998, whatever the currently favored start year is cherry picked by the pseudo skeptics for their assertion that “the warming stopped”.

“There have been problems with historical land based temperature sensors, and whether Muller addresses the problems is yet to be seen.”

As if no one had studied possible biases due to this, as if possible biases hadn’t been taken into account for the surface temperature analyses so far. For instance, doi: 10.1029/2011JD016187, doi: 10.1029/2009JD013094

“Fortunately we have satellite data from the year 1979 that give a more accurate global picture of earth temperatures.”

What makes you think satellite data would provide a more accurate picture of Earth’s temperatures than e.g., instrumental temperature records?

I don’t know why temperatures derived from satellite data are unqestionedly presented as superior truth compared to surface temperature measurements again and again. Satellites don’t even measure temperature, they measure radiation fluxes. The temperature is derived by applying mathematical alghorithms that relate the temperature to the radiation fluxes. Those alghorithms can be erroneous. And they have been erroneous in the past. Does anyone remember the claims about 10 years ago made by skeptics, that surface temperatures were wrong because temperatures from satellites didn’t show the trend the surface temperatures showed, or even a slight cooling? Well, as it turned out the mathematical algorithm applied by Spencer and Christy who were responsible for those and who published the satellite temperature records were faulty. Since then thy had to correct the algorithm a few times, and every time the corrected temperatures from satellites became more consistent with the surface temperature record. I have never seen that any of the deniers, like Ferrara from Heartland, who so easily accuse climate scientists of fraud and forgery, even w/o any evidence, have ever accused Spencer or Christy of fraud and lying for presenting faulty temperature records over many years. Not saying they should. Just pointing to Heartland’s and similar minded one’s hypocrisy.

At least its actual data that the satellites capture. It isn’t the work of some computer programmer who never leaves his home and cannot be bothered to take a measurement to see if the predictions of his lousy GCM come any where close to observed fact. The satellites cover lots of terrain. Current and manipulated temperature data from the scarcity of land based stations and now ocean based stations cannot even compare to its breadth.

The GCMs of all these wonderful climatologists never foresaw this current plateau in temperatures. No it was Mann made global warming with its sharply rising stick that was proclaimed as the truth. But not any more. Even Phil Jones admits no statistically significant warming these last 15 years. Your information is wrong. Past predictions of AGW disaster have failed. Europe is seeing snowfalls not seen in many years. Britain’s airports sold all their snow clearing equipment at the encouragement of the Met office.

“At least its actual data that the satellites capture. It isn’t the work of some computer programmer…”

What don’t you understand about that satellites don’t measure temperatures and that temperatures derived from radiation fluxes using mathematical algorithms, i.e., computer programs.

“Current and manipulated temperature data from the scarcity of land based stations and now ocean based stations…”

The assertion of “manipulated temperature data” is the usual libelous smearing of the climate scientists who do the analyses using these data.

“The GCMs of all these wonderful climatologists never foresaw this current plateau in temperatures.”

Of course they didn’t. Because climate model don’t simulate the individual temperature realization with it’s short-term up or down wobbles of the real world. Climate models simulate the statistical properties of the whole population of all possible climate realizations for a certain set of boundary conditions (which can change with time).

Faulting climate models and climate simulations for something for which they are not designed and faulting climate scientists for failed predictions no one has made is just a logically fallacious argument, which can’t disprove anything what climate science really says.

“No it was Mann made global warming with its sharply rising stick that was proclaimed as the truth.”

The hockey stick isn’t simplicistic and still hasn’t been invalidated. 10 or 15 years of temperature data are totally irrelevant for the hockey stick.

This statement is a distortion of what Jones really said. He hadn’t “admitted” anything. His statement in 2010 was that the temperature trend since 1995 hadn’t been statistically significant with 95% significance probability, but “almost” (so it already may have been statistically significant e.g. with 90% probability). In the meantime, the trend since 1995 has become statistically significant with 95%. That’s probably the reason why the pseudo skeptics have moved their cherry picked start year up to 1998 to claim that there wasn’t any warming anymore, which is convenient for them, since this was a year with high solar acitivity in the 11-year solar cycle and with a particularly strong El Nino to which the globally averaged temperature anomaly is strongly correlated. In a few years, they probably will have moved forward the start year for the same claim again, because also 1998 won’t do it anymore.

“I am going to make a prediction. AGW will be dead in 5 years, save for a handful of strident loonies.”

Wishful thinking. Flatearthers probably believe the same with respect to the shape of Earth.

It’s much more likely that within five years the globally averaged surface temperature will have reached new record values since 1880, once solar activity has reached near maximum values in the solar cycle again and if there is a new El Nino at the same time. 2011 was the warmest La Nina year on instrumental record, according to the UK Met office, and the first decade of this century was the warmest decade since the start of the instrumental temperature measurements. Heat buildup in the oceans has continued as a recent study by Hansen et al. (2011) shows, which analyzes the ARGO data (doi: 10.5194/acp-11-13421-2011). Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase. Accordingly, the radiative forcing by greenhouse gases will further increase, leading to a continuation of the long-term warming trend of Earth’s surface and troposphere.

In 10 or 20 years, the sect of pseudo-skeptics will probably have shrunk to a much smaller number, but their “arguments” and conspiracy fantasies will have become even more obscure and absurd. Perhaps, Forbes won’t give them any space for their propaganda anymore by then.

It obvious that nothing anyone says in here will change your mind. You just simply tow the IPCC dogma b.s. You are not interested in scientific truth. You are just interested in the “cause”. It’s become a religion to you. It’s like when the religious cultist come to my door. I simply cannot reason with them.

What’s it like to be so gullible? As a professional engineer, I’ve never experienced that trait. Do you believe everything the government tells you? Do you believe everything the IPCC tells you? Amazing. Do you know how to think for yourself?

Anyway. As long as you are happy in your delusion, that’s what counts!

That’s because the satellite data is widely recognized as being “superior” to the surface temperature stations which have proven to be dramatically affected by the Urban Heat Island effect. If you had any true grasp of the actual science behind climatology, you would know this. The satellite data clearly shows no statistical warming in the last 15 years and the Argo system also shows no statistical oceanic warming since the system was introduced in 2003. Contrary to the IPCC models.

Perhaps, because it’s so little convincing what the pseudo skeptics have to say? Assertions w/o evidence, unscientifc rubbish, ad hominem attacks, smearing of scientists. And this, just look the hostility that comes to light, the way you address me, shows that you have lost the rational argument a long time ago.

“You are not interested in scientific truth.”

More than you.

“What’s it like to be so gullible? As a professional engineer, I’ve never experienced that trait.”

So you say. And yet you repeat here the biggest scientific rubbish you read in pseudo skeptic opinion blogs, like the claim about “no warming since 1998/2001″. Well, Mr. engineer what about you get some scientific education first? You obviously largly overestimate your own scientific competence and credentials.

“Anyway. As long as you are happy in your delusion, that’s what counts!”

Then, I’m in the good company of many scientists from all over the world who work and publish in climate science, scientific journals like Nature, Science, PNAS, specialist journals in the field of climate, the National Academy of Science, scientific organizations all over the world. Either this, or I’m not the one who is delusional.

“That’s because the satellite data is widely recognized as being “superior” to the surface temperature stations which have proven to be dramatically affected by the Urban Heat Island effect. If you had any true grasp of the actual science behind climatology, you would know this.”

So you assert you know the science, but I didn’t. In this case, please name studies published in peer reviewed specialist journals, which have proven that the surface temperature analyses (e.g., the one done at NASA GISS) are dramatically distorted by “the Urban Heat Island” effect.

Here is one that says otherwise: http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha00510u.html

And as if temperatures derived from satellite data couldn’t have any errors or biases at all by any means. Blind belief in data, when it is convenient.

“The satellite data clearly shows no statistical warming in the last 15 years”

Like in the last one year. Or in the last two days. Right? “The last 15 years” must be some magical number. It seems to be always “the last 15 years”. And in five years from now, it will be again “the last 15 years” that didn’t show any “statistical warming”. Global temperatures will move up, and in 50 years from now, if there are still some of the pseudo skeptics left, they still will claim there wasn’t any global warming trend, because there hadn’t been any statistical significant signal for “the last 15 years”.

“and the Argo system also shows no statistical oceanic warming since the system was introduced in 2003. Contrary to the IPCC models.”

As for Earth heat balance calculations using the ARGO data: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20120130b/

Actually, five years from now we’ll be saying “cooling over the last twenty years.

We’re just exiting the solar grand maximum, a period of the highest solar activity in several centuries of observation. Now all the solar scientists are debating how deep the new minimum will be, but they all agree that it will be long and deep, extending to at least 2040. The planet is going to get cold, very cold, and very soon.

The IPCC rejected the idea of a significnat solar effect on climate (which is truly a bizarre position) because as far as we knew, the change in visible light output from the sun is very small. Since then we’ve learned that the change in UV output, which is much larger, may very significantly effect upper atmosphere temperatures. We’ve also learned that it would modulate cosmic ray flux and that cosmic rays change cloud formation, making large changes in planetary albedo. And quite recently solar scientists have said that their earlier assumption that solar output doesn’t significantly drop during very deep minima may be wrong, as they’ve never had a chance to view the sun’s surface during a deep minima.

Secondly, the instrument records are land based. What’s the percentage of land vs ocean? Something like 30% – 70% (don’t have the figure in front of me).

Finally, are you not concerned that there might be problems with UHI effect? Wouldn’t you want to make sure that the temperature records were accurate? Or are your preconceived ideas preventing you from going down that path?

How about a paper from the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics?

Abstract: Relations between the length of a sunspot cycle and the average temperature in the same and the next cycle are calculated for a number of meteorological stations in Norway and in the North Atlantic region. No significant trend is found between the length of a cycle and the average temperature in the same cycle, but a significant negative trend is found between the length of a cycle and the temperature in the next cycle. This provides a tool to predict an average temperature decrease of at least 1.0 ◦C from solar cycle 23 to 24 for the stations and areas analyzed. We find for the Norwegian local stations investigated that 25–56% of the temperature increase the last 150 years may be attributed to the Sun. For 3 North Atlantic stations we get 63–72% solar contribution. This points to the Atlantic currents as reinforcing a solar signal.

We can also predict the length of solar cycle 24 with good accuracy (solar science has improved) and at 17 years will be even longer than cycle 23. That means that temperatures in cycle 25 will be about 2 degrees C colder, colder than the planet has been since the year 1700.

The Max Planck Institute of Solar Studies and CERN have also contributed to the new understanding of solar variables. Unfortunately, the idea that the sun drives climate would purge tens of billions of dollars from the climate research community, so warmists spend a lot of time trying to make sure nobody hears about the solar-climate research, which is obviously why you didn’t even think there was a paper on it, much less massive numbers of papers.

The solar theories explain the wide swings in historical temperatures, going back past the Roman warm period. The CO2 theory predicts that there should’ve been no swings until the 1940′s, and then the only swing should’ve been upward. Instead temperatures dropped for 30 years, something CO2 theory still can’t explain.

No one can dispute the IPCC claims at the moment, because at the moment they are not falsifiable.

You waltz in here like you’re going to set us all straight about climate change, but you are missing the big elephant standing in the room. The IPCC.

The IPCC is a total joke. The IPCC’s founders were a bunch of climate activists with an agenda in mind. Read the history. It was never about the science. They new the conclusions before the first study was conducted. Climategate has proved what a pack of liars they are. Especially Trenberth. His actions regarding Chris Landsea were despicable, and he is basically is guilty of science fraud in the whole affair. Be my guest if you want to defend him. Ya. I want to see you defend that imbecile. And then the total idiotic claims that the science is settled. Einstein is probably rolling in his grave….at the speed of light.

All you have left to stand on is your stupid IPCC models. Yes and I have such great faith in the models, when your own IPCC scientist Jagadish Shukla admitted:

… It is inconceivable that policymakers will be willing to make billion-and trillion-dollar decisions for adaptation to the projected regional climate change based on models that do not even describe and simulate the processes that are the building blocks of climate variability.

Climate scientist Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. states:

“The consequences of the IPCC and others in assuming climate prediction is a boundary-value problem is that they are spending huge amount of funds and computer time on preparing regional climate forecasts of the coming decades for the impacts community that are not only without any skill, but are grossly misleading the public and policymakers on what are[sic] climate may be decades from now”

Too bad if you don’t like what Pielke states. He has peer review published papers on the subject. Go argue with him.

Two world class physicists resigned from the American Physical Society in the last two years because of the APS position supporting IPCC dogma: Hal Lewis and Nobel prize winner for physics, Dr. Ivar Giaever. I would not characterize these gentlemen as “flat-earthers”. Do you have a Nobel Prize in physics?

You were right when you said you shouldn’t be here. You are way over your head and out of your league. You must have played hookey the day they discussed the scientific method. Because you have no clue what is required regarding the testing of a hypothesis. I could care less what your credentials are.

An assertion that is not based on facts. Fact is that the IPCC review report about “The Physical Science Basis” of climate, that includes the projections about future climate, is backed up with hundreds of scientific research papers, which all can be found in the reference list of the report. Sure, someone like you who only copies his opinions from denier blogs, from where he also copies some out of context and quote mined email fragments, can’t know this.

1. As for Pielke, Sr. He doesn’t seem to agree with that climate simulations are a boundary value problem. The quote doesn’t contain any scientific argument why they weren’t. The rest of the quote is a political argument. You can’t refute results from scientific research with political arguments. And this quote is just opinion anyway. Do you know the difference between mere opinion and scientific publications?

2. Pielke, Sr. talk about the skills of regional climate change projections. What follows from this about the reality of anthropogenic global warming and the skill of models to reproduce globally averaged climate variables? Nothing. What have I said about regional climate change projections?

Jan Perlwitz _ What they seem to have not understood is that the satellite measurements are of atmospheric temperatures while the instrumental surface readings are, well, surface temperatures. Even so, the satellite and the surface instrumental readings agree closely.

Just like the Mann graph that displayed so prominently and then disappeared, oh sorry, was buried in the back pages.

Hundreds of peer reviewed papers?

#### What is all the fuss about? Like many people, me included, Laframboise used to take climate science at face value. She thought the case had been made by a committee of many neutral scientists working for the UN that global warming was a serious threat.

After all, as Mark Twain once said, “people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing”…

She was not the first Canadian outsider to do this. About seven years before, an expert mathematician named Stephen McIntyre, also a resident of Toronto, had begun to request the data and analysis behind the famous “hockey stick graph” that appeared six times in the 2001 report of the IPCC.

He eventually found that it was a house of cards, based on faulty data filtered through a distorting statistical lens. McIntyre’s careful “audit” is now legendary, as is the resistance and calumny he encountered. The hockey stick graph was dropped by the IPCC…

Laframboise focused on the IPCC reports themselves. How were they actually written and who by? The impression the UN gave was that they were composed by thousands of senior scientists.

In the words of Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC: “These are people who have been chosen on the basis of their track record, on their record of publications, on the research that they have done . . . They are people who are at the top of their profession.”

In fact, as Laframboise meticulously documents, world experts on malaria, hurricanes and other topics are excluded because of their sceptical views; while a relatively small clique does the actual writing, many of whom are young and have such a short “track record” that they barely have higher degrees.

Moreover, many of the authors are up to their necks in activism.

For example, two of the four lead authors of the Asia chapter of the 2007 IPCC report were affiliated with the World Wildlife Fund.

That chapter was where the report claimed that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035, based on a non-peer-reviewed publication from, you guessed it, WWF.

Likewise, nine chapters of the 2007 report were based partly on the work of the Australian marine biologist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg who was also a contributing author, and has been promoted to a co-ordinating lead author for the next report….

In one case, McIntyre asked for help in getting access to unpublished data that had been cited in evidence by the draft. He was told “if your intent is to . . . challenge (the rules), then we will not be able to continue to treat you as an expert reviewer for the IPCC.”

Which brings me to Laframboise’s most startling achievement. Noting that this incident and the WWF glacier claim revealed non-peer-reviewed sources being used by the IPCC, Laframboise set out to test Pachauri’s claim that “we carry out an assessment of climate change based on peer-reviewed literature, so everything that we look at and take into account in our assessments has to carry (the) credibility of peer-reviewed publications — we don’t settle for anything less than that.”

In March last year, Laframboise recruited 43 private citizens in 12 countries online to audit the entire IPCC 2007 report and count the number of non-peer-reviewed references. Each section was audited by three people and the lowest (most conservative) estimate used.

Even so, the audit showed that 5587 of 18,531 — fully one-third — were non-peer-reviewed sources: including newspaper articles, activist reports, even press releases. The IPCC had a rule that such sources must be flagged as such. It had been ignored. When criticised for this last year by a panel of the world science academies, it simply changed the rule. ####

I am not a complete idiot. I knew you were an research scientist for NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies the minute you came to this blog. It’s obvious you have a strong science background. And you keep posting links to NASA docs that you must have easy access to. But, that’s besides the point.

Are you going to defend Trenberth or not? IPCC “lead” author. He lied and was “shopping around” for a scientist that would agree with the lie he told the press. As a scientist, that staggers me. Please tell me how you can have any faith in the IPCC.

And please tell me how the IPCC tested their models to give confident predictions all the way to the year 2100?

Like I said, go argue with Pielke. I think his credentials exceed yours. I’m sure you perform some fine research, but use your scientific investigative skills and intelligence to look objectively at the whole issue.

Do I think humans have an impact on the earth’s climate? Absolutely. It’s question of how much. And climate science is in its infancy, and the science is no where even close to being settled. The earths’ climate system is complex, chaotic and not fully understood.

I can think of many reasons why other scientist have not left the APS. Money, money, money, money, and money. $. Right now, there is a certain stigma associated with anyone who disagrees with the IPCC propaganda. Even if a scientist personally disagreed with the IPCC b.s., his job could be on the line if he went public. Kind of like in the old days, when if you were found out to be gay, it was bye bye.

But I am in good company with the likes of Hal Lewis and Nobel prize winner for physics, Dr. Ivar Giaever. Maybe you should display some independent thinking and join us.

physics guy – I’ll stick with reading climate science written by climate scientists. Lewis was a solid state and plasma physicist back in the day and Giaever did some early work on semi-conductors. Two retired guys quitting a professional society isn’t exactly a blow to the underpinnings of climate science.

How about a paper from the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics?

As I see the manuscript has just been submitted and hasn’t made it yet through the peer review process. But thanks, I didn’t know the manuscript.

Let’s just assume it’s going to make it.

So you seem to firmly believe the authors have found the unquestionable truth about the influence of the sun on climate.

We can also predict the length of solar cycle 24 with good accuracy (solar science has improved) and at 17 years will be even longer than cycle 23. That means that temperatures in cycle 25 will be about 2 degrees C colder, colder than the planet has been since the year 1700.

And now imagine the cycle stops all together, i.e., the cycle length becomes infinite. Then, what follows from the linear relationship between solar cycle length and temperature, which is assumed by the authors? I guess Earth’s temperatures will drop to absolute Zero and below within 600 years or so. Or not.

Let’s look at the authors’ predictions for the whole Northern Hemisphere and the global average:

“Our forecast indicates an annual average temperature drop of 0.9◦C in the Northern Hemisphere during solar cycle 24…

…An Artic cooling may relate to a global cooling in the same way, resulting in a smaller global cooling, about 0.3-0.5 ◦C in SC24.”

To get a grasp what the authors’ prediction is, here the HadCRUT3 temperature anomaly for comparison: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/nhshgl.gif

So, the authors predict that the temperature anomaly averaged over the whole Northern Hemisphere and over 10 to 15 years or so will suddenly drop within the next few years, effectively starting this or next year, back to the level of about 1920 (sic!). And the globally averaged temperature anomaly back to the level of the 1980s. A steep fall in just a very few years. If this really happened, it would be sensational for climate science.

The authors derive this prediction from applying a purely statistical technique, a regression analysis. No physical explanation is given how this may be possible.

If this really happened it would surprise me. I don’t see it from a purely energy balanced based point of view. This is why: The radiative forcing difference between solar maximum and minimum amounts to about 0.3 W/m^2. (actually more like 0.7*0.3 because of the Earth albedo. This would favor my arguments. Let’s leave it with 0.3 W/m^2). So, even if the solar cycle totally stopped, i.e, the solar cycle length went to infinite, and the solar activity staid at the minimum level of the cycle forever, solar forcing would be only 0.15 W/m^2 (difference between average over whole cycle and minimum), or let’s say, to be conservative, 0.2 W/m^2 lower than it is today. Radiative forcing by CO2 currently increases by about 0.28 W/m^2 per decade. Thus, comparing the magnitudes of both forcings, even if the solar cycle totally stopped, the decrease in solar radiative forcing would counteract the warming effect of the CO2-increase of only less than 10 years. Not more. (If solar activity went below the current solar cycle minimum, this would add to the counteracting effect.) So, how is an increase in the solar cycle length of a few years supposed to have such a big temperature decreasing effect, just by adding a few years to the length of the cycle? It doesn’t make sense to me from an energy balance based point of view.

This is my reason why I expect the predictions made by the authors of the manuscript regarding the Northern Hemispheric and globally averaged temperatures to be a big failure, and that the conclusions of the study won’t be robust and won’t withstand the test of time. The only thing that may be right is that there is some delayed effect of the last deeper and more prolonged minimum on the temperature record in the cycle that has started now.

If I’m wrong, and the authors’ predictions become true, I’ll have to rethink my understanding of climate science. Will you rethink your believe in the sun as the dominant driver of the temperature record in the second half of the 20th century up today, if I’m right?

And the great NASA temperature data comes by way of the anomalies? Which is exactly what, Jan. You took such time to carefully explain the satellite data collection and its troubles. Do explain what and how they use anomalies to arrive at SATs at your good ole GISS.

And none have ever accused Mann of manipulating temperature data, have they? No such thing as a Wegman report? No such thing as a hide the decline reference? No such thing as a few tree ring samples providing the data to turn the stick graph line way up into the stratosphere. No such thing as a LIA or a MWP. No such thing as a Greenland.

You are not a scientist, Jan. You’re a politician defending a dying doctrine, upon which you depend for income.

So the temperature data is not significant with a CI of 95%, but almost significant with a less reliable 90%CI. That reassures me.

So the science of climate is not so settled then, is it? The GCMs failed to pick up a natural phenomenon lasting a short time, that appears to account for all the warming of the last 30 years. This natural phenomenon seems to have such an enduring effect. I guess they missed that to. I wonder what else they will miss. Maybe a new ice age, natural variability being what it is.

In 5 years, Jan, you will be singing a different tune. Thats the way things go in publicly funded organizations. Its all about political doctrine of the day.

The IPCC attempted to verify their models by hindcasting. It’s one thing to tune a model to simulate past climate events, but it’s a completely different ball-game to actually verfify a model by forecasting.

Even the scientist D. Huard who was critical of the G. G. Anagnostopoulos et al. 2010 study admitted:

“Climate simulations included in IPCC’s TAR and AR4 also make no pretence of predicting/forecasting weather or climate” and “A climate projection is thus not a prediction of climate, it is an experiment probing the model’s response to change in GHG [greenhouse gas] concentrations.”

Were the IPCC models able to predict the 30 year cooling period from the 1940′s to the 1970′s? No. They were not.

Huard also stated:

“under constant external forcing, TAR and AR4 simulations have no predictive skill whatsoever on the chronology of events beyond the annual cycle”

And so far, the AR4 models did not accurately predict the flat temperatures of the last decade.

G. G. Anagnostopoulos et al. 2010:

“Whoever proposes a hypothesis, a theory or a model, is responsible for thinking of the testability of the hypothesis, theory or model. One valid solution, for example, would be if the climate modellers provided runs of several hundreds or thousands of years, so as to have more data points for comparisons, perhaps with the help of palaeoclimatic reconstructions. But Huard, admitting that the natural variability cannot be captured by climate models, annuls this solution. What remains is to wait for some hundreds of years, until we have enough data points to ensure testability and, thus, upgrade of popular climate hypotheses into a theory. Until then, we can call them simple conjectures and make no use of them in practice and particularly in policymaking.

Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. and other scientists have come to the same conclusion. The models are useless for use in the climate impacts community.

It’s not surprising you wouldn’t imagine a mechanism by which solar cycles could dramatically alter the Earth’s climate, as the IPCC rejects all such models because they undercut the CO2 theory. They point to the supposed small change in visible spectrum output, run it through their models, and the models produce only a slight change in temperature.

However, solar scientists are saying that even they themselves don’t know that the change in visible spectrum output is necessarily small because they haven’t had the chance to observe a deep minimum with modern or satellite instruments, and they speculate that it may in fact be quite deep, which would better explain the temperature drop during the Maunder and Dalton minimums.

It was only recently that they found a correlation between solar UV output and cold winters (Reuters article) caused by a change in UV flux, something the IPCC never even considered possible, and UV changes much more dramatically than visible output with solar cycles.

Then we get into the recently proposed and confirmed (by CERN) cosmic-ray effects, whereby changes in solar wind cause changes in cloud formation, and thus albedo, creating a strong amplification of solar cycle effects.

If the solar cycle length suddenly went to infinity, as you propose, it would indicate that the sun has essentially gone out. It shouldn’t take an astrophycis degree to predict that the Earth’s temperature would plummet to that of of Neptune or Pluto.

“It’s not surprising you wouldn’t imagine a mechanism by which solar cycles could dramatically alter the Earth’s climate, as the IPCC rejects all such models because they undercut the CO2 theory.”

What do you mean with “rejected”? That they weren’t mentioned and discussed in the AR4 report of the IPCC? Which model specifically, published where, would that be that had been “rejected by the IPCC”?

“They point to the supposed small change in visible spectrum output, run it through their models, and the models produce only a slight change in temperature.”

The IPCC doesn’t do anything like this, already for the simple reason that the IPCC doesn’t run any models.

“However, solar scientists are saying that even they themselves don’t know that the change in visible spectrum output is necessarily small because they haven’t had the chance to observe a deep minimum with modern or satellite instruments, and they speculate that it may in fact be quite deep, which would better explain the temperature drop during the Maunder and Dalton minimums.”

Who says that where? References please.

“It was only recently that they found a correlation between solar UV output and cold winters (Reuters article) caused by a change in UV flux, something the IPCC never even considered possible, and UV changes much more dramatically than visible output with solar cycles.”

Who is “the IPCC” supposed to be in your statement? How would you know what “the IPCC” considers possible?

And you apparently misundertand the topic of research that is mentioned in the Reuters article. The topic is not about whether solar activity has a bigger influence on Earth global climate than anthropogenic carbon dioxide with it’s radiative forcing. It’s about the influence of the solar cycle, particularly the UV range of the solar spectrum on Northerm Hemispheric circulation patterns, leading to a different redistribution of the energy from the tropics to higher latitudes in years of low activity compared to years with high activity, producing cold temperature anomalies in some regions, and warm temperature anomalies in other regions. It has nothing to do with “global warming”, or a refutation of it.

Please name the scientific reference according to which the link between cosmic ray flux and cloud albedo, the strong amplification of the colar cycle, through which the solar activity controls climate, was “confirmed” by CERN. I don’t know any. I say you make this alleged confirmation just up. Wishful thinking.

“If the solar cycle length suddenly went to infinity, as you propose, it would indicate that the sun has essentially gone out.”

No, it would mean solar activity staid at a level, which was the minimum of the solar cycle. Solar activity is not Zero at the minimum of the solar cycle. The difference in the total radiative flux that comes in between maximum and minimum of the cycle is about 1 W/m^2 at the top of the atmosphere. During the Maunder minimum, the 11-year solar cycle was quasi non-existent. It would be news to me that the sun had been one the way to going out back then. Global temperatures during the Little Ice Age were less than 1 deg C lower than the average of the 20th century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png

Oh, and what I wanted to add, good luck with your prediction of a sudden temperature drop by 0.9 deg. C for the whole Northern Hemisphere averaged over solar cycle 24, and by 0.3 to 0.5 for the whole globe!

And you didn’t answer my question. Will you reconsider your views of the sun as the most important factor that changed global temperatures in recent decades, compared to anthropogenic greenhouse gases, if I’m right with my anticipation that your/the authors’ predicition will be a failure and will be refuted by real world data?

dariusaria,glad you posted the link to the hit piece.It shows your lack of ability to understand what this is even about,if you would have followed the link in the so called article you could have actually listened to the interview and would realize what twisted crap journalism you are spouting off about.But people like you aren’t interested in the facts are you? Now you have only succeeded in looking like a fool.Better luck next time.

Hi Peter. Seems James isn’t enough to save HI’s bacon so you guys are tag teaming now. ” From the graph it appears that the projections [of the models] exaggerate, substantially, the response of the earth’s temperature to CO2 which increased by about 11% from 1989 through 2011. Furthermore, when one examines the historical temperature record throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, the data strongly suggest a much lower CO2 effect than almost all models calculate.”

Seems like the models have been falsified.”

Well no actually Peter, since the models predict periods of a decade or so where surface warming at the surface stalls – you should reed Meehl et al 2011 for example. That doesn’t mean warming has stopped. Just that where it is occurring. And, just as it has for the last 1/2 century, warming is continuing just fine in the location where most of the heat is going. The Oceans. They absorb about 90% of the heat from AGW and they are still warming at much the same rate as they have for the last 50 years. Recently they seem to have shifted to a different pattern of warming, where more heat is being drawn down to the middle depths and less being retained in the surface layers. So the surface layers haven’t warmed as much recently and as a result the air temperatures that you are commenting on also haven’t warmed as much. But the atmosphere, what we think of as climate, only accounts for around 3% of the extra heat.

And Ice is still melting, at 500 Billion tonnes a year. And that takes heat to melt that Ice Peter, more heat from AGW.

And with the sheer size of the heat accumulation in the oceans, there is no other source of heat here on Earth that could supply that much. So it must be coming from outside then Earth. Since the Sun hasn’t warmed in the last 1/2 century, if anything it has cooled slightly, that can’t be the source of the heat.

Which leaves something blocking the escape of heat to Space – just as AGW predicts.

To give you some idea of how much heat we are talking about, since 1961 21 x 10^22 joules of heat has ccumulated, 90%of it in the oceans. To put that number into context since that many zeroes are hard to get our heads around, that is the equivalent of:

- 2 Hiroshima Bombs every SECOND for 50 years.

- Boiling Sydney Harbour DRY every 12 HOURS for 50 years.

- Enough heat that if ALL of it had gone into the atmosphere, not just 3%, air temperatures would have warmed by 42 Deg C. Not 0.8 Deg C. Average world temperatures would now be around 57 Deg C.

And it hasn’t stopped. So maybe AGW hasn’t been so falsified after all.

So perhaps if you guys at HI want to write articles about AGW it would pay you to be sure you are well read about the science. Otherwise you might inadvertently be expressing very uninformed and misleading opinions. And I’m sure that your various donors, particulary that Anonymous one, would be very upset if they realised that the advocacy agency they have hired was peddling untruths, misreporting and deception in their name. Which of course we all know you are not. Nothing but God’s honest truth from the HI.

By the way, the ‘Anonymous Donor’ wouldn’t be ‘Donors Capital Fund’ from Virginia or Donors Trust would it?

With all this heat accumulating in the oceans, where are the rises in sea levels? Water expands with heat accumulation. So where is the natural result?

The Maldives are often 6 ft above sea level. Why haven’t they disappeared as all this heat gathers in the seas around them?

Now if this CO2 is just so magically catalystic, why are there no CO2 heat generators in the cold climes? If it is the source of so much heat accumulation in the oceans and on land, why do we not have walls of CO2 encasing our homes? Because it would leave us burnt shells, CO2 being so powerful?

Sorry, but the ARGO probes are showing absolutely no change in ocean heat content, and your paper saying there should be a delay in surface warming was published in 2011, not prior to when the lack of surface warming became an inconvenient truth.

Such claims are desperate, post-hoc attempts to explain failed predictions, such as last year’s devastating winter which buried the Northern hemisphere in snow, causing climate scientists to breathlessly claim that warming causes more moisture in the air and thus more snow. It wouldn’t have been an issue if they hadn’t spent the previous decade warning of a world without snow. In any event, the claim was quickly and soundly refuted, as cold air picks up moisture faster, which is why lake-effect snow is much worse when it’s cold. On top of that, if warmth caused snow then Panama would have more ski resorts than the Alps. In the face of scientific ridicule, the claims were withdrawn and cooler heads said the severe winter was caused by natural weather patterns.

The current problem for them is the lack of warming, so they’ll assembly a flimsy model excuse to try to explain it away while still leaving the sword of Damocles dangling above our heads. If you go back through the IPCC predictions you’ll find that this is normal behavior for them. Since the 90′s they keep drawing the same range of hockey-sticks, but they keep moving the predicted onset to the right. “It hasn’t happened now, but it’s about to!”

All real-world temperature data since the 90′s has consistently been one to six sigma below the IPCC’s predicted warming, the odds of which are now 1 in 10^14 power against if the IPCC models are true. That means the odds that the IPCC is right now stand at only 1 in 100 trillion, a devastating refutation if there ever was one.

“Global sea levels fell by 6mm in 2010. And the way the data looks, we will likely have a negative trend from 2010 to the end of 2011.”

It’s always the same game with the pseudo skeptics. Every time a climate variable wobbles opposite to the long-term trend, they get very excited and loudly claim there is no trend, what was supposed to be the trend will be reversed, and established climate science finally refuted.

“I just stated the facts. I did not make any commentary one way or the other. I suppose the last decade of flat temperatures are a wobble too?”

We don’t know that yet. As I already tried to explain, apparently w/o any success, a decade of temperatures is a too short data series to make a scientifically valid statement about the presence or absence of a warming trend, using those data. You can find similar decades in the ’80s and ’90s with the right choice of start and end year, which could have given the impression, by just looking at the limited data set, that there wasn’t any positive temperature trend. And those were just wobbles at the end.

Looking at the whole picture, my anticipation is that it will likely turn out as just another wobble, although the trend could be slowing somewhat, if solar activity is trending down. I consider it likely that globally averaged temperatures will reach new record values within a few years, at least, if higher solar acitivity and a new El Nino are present at the same time. In the first decade of this century, we had low solar acitivity and La Nina conditions present at the same time (2007-2009). The El Ninos in the years before in the same decade were weaker. Nevertheless, it was the warmest decade since 1880.

I nominate as the remainder of the panel the rest of Lindzen’s MIT atmospheric science and oceanography colleagues, for though he has conspicuously failed to persuade any of them to join him, the healthier aspects of his skepticism have rubbed off on many.

The last thing Ferrara wants you to read is MIT Oceanography Department chairman and Lindzen protege’ Kerry Emanuel’s excellent short book , Phaeton’s Reins

I nominate you as “village idiot”. I must say, you have an active imagination.

I don’t even see Phaeton’s Reins on Amazon. Oops, I forgot to check the “science fiction” section. Kerry Emanuel. Right. He’s the dufus who had to “rethink” his previous conclusion that global warming increases the threat of more hurricane activity than normal.

Right. That’s because the real data indicates that global hurricane frequency has been decreasing since 1994. And accumulated cyclone energy has been steadily decreasing since 1992, and the current ACE value is lower than it was in 1972. (http://policlimate.com/tropical/index.html) Wow, what a startling revelation that must have been! The real observed data will always get you in the end. That’s what’s great about the scientific method. You can come up with all the hair-brained hypotheses you desire, but the real world data is what counts.

Most undergraduate degrees for meteorology majors are the non-ABET accredited types. I am not sure which type Kerry Emanuel received, but it would not surprise me if his was non ABET accredited (unlike my engineering degree which was ABET accredited). Those with a less rigorous scientific background tend to not be well versed in the various aspects of the scientific method.

Emanuel had to change his hypothesis relating to hurricane frequency and climate change because real world data did not confirm his previous “political” convictions. How inconvenient.

Now, that’s funny. On one hand, “thephysicsguy” accuses climate scientists of not testing their hypotheses against real world data (which is an accusation that is not based on facts). Then, when there is an example for a climate scientists revising his hypothesis when the real world data contradicted it, “thephysicsguy” uses this as an argument against the climate scientist’s character again. It looks like it doesn’t really matter what the scientist does, one thing or its opposite, it’s used for character smearing against him in any case.

“And accumulated cyclone energy has been steadily decreasing since 1992, and the current ACE value is lower than it was in 1972. (http://policlimate.com/tropical/index.html)”

“The current ACE value is lower than it was in 1972″, as if this was of any significance. Nice cherry picking again. I equally could claim it was higher than in 1975. However, the only thing the data since 1972 presented there really show is that there has been large variability in the ACE value over the decades.

“Most undergraduate degrees for meteorology majors are the non-ABET accredited types. I am not sure which type Kerry Emanuel received, but it would not surprise me if his was non ABET accredited (unlike my engineering degree which was ABET accredited). Those with a less rigorous scientific background tend to not be well versed in the various aspects of the scientific method.”

So, Mr. engineer speculates that he had a better scientific background than Kerry Emanuel. Really! Emanuel didn’t just make it through undergraduate studies, he achieved his PhD in Meteorology at MIT in 1978, and teaches now as a professor of atmospheric sciences at MIT.

Here is a list of Emanuel’s research papers: http://eaps4.mit.edu/faculty/Emanuel/publications/research_papers

Now, Mr. engineer show your credentials so they can be compared to the ones of Prof. Emanuel.

“Emanuel had to change his hypothesis relating to hurricane frequency and climate change because real world data did not confirm his previous ‘political’ convictions.”

I wonder what those “political” convictions were supposed to be, based on which Emanuel had formulated his hypothesis, according to the assertion made here.

Dr. Paul Ehrlic, PhD. If you look up “dingbat” in the dictionary, Ehrlic’s picture is there. Ehrlic is a teaching professor at Stanford University, and has published many papers. I read his book, “The Population Bomb” (required reading). All of his predictions “bombed” too. A PhD is no guarantee of scientific integrity or expertise. I started as an environmental studies major, but realized the field was flooded with too many dingbats such as Ehrlich, then switched to civil engineering. (Thank you Paul!) (…time passes as I read Emanuel’s papers)

What the? Why does Emanuel list Chris Landsea as a reference in his Nature 2005 paper? He even makes a special acknowledgment to Landsea. Same thing in Emanuel’s 2008 hurricane paper. O.K. Brownie points are in order for Emanuel. I retract what I said about him, and calling him a dufus.

Chris Landsea was the “bad-boy” climate scientist who resigned from participating in the IPCC AR4 report because the process was too political. Part of his resignation letter:

“I have decided to withdraw from participating in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns.” (http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/LandseaResignationLetterFromIPCC.htm)

Lead IPCC author Kevin Trenberth had requested Landsea provide a write up for Atlantic hurricanes as part of the AR4 report. Shortly after, Trenberth participated in a press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic, “Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity” along with other media interviews on the topic. Landsea even cautioned Trenberth prior to the media event and provided him a summary of the current understanding within the hurricane research community, which was completely opposite to what Trenberth reported at the event. Trenberth lied at the press conference – IPCC lead author. Landsea’s report was not what Trenberth wanted, so he made one up that fit his “cause”.

Climategate emails related to the above:

Trenberth: [...] opposing some things said by people like Chris Landsea who has said all the stuff going on is natural variability. In addition to the 4 hurricanes hitting Florida, there has been a record number hit Japan 10?? and I saw a report saying Japanese scientists had linked this to global warming. [...] I am leaning toward the idea of getting a box on changes in hurricanes, perhaps written by a Japanese.

Jones: We can put a note in that something will be there in the next draft, or Kevin or I will write something – it depends on whether and what we get from Japan.

Jones: Kevin, Seems that this potential Nature paper may be worth citing, if it does say that GW is having an effect on TC activity.

How can you read the above and have any ounce of confidence or trust in the IPCC? And this is just the tip of the iceberg. And you guys complain about Heartland?

And RUSSELL SEITZ. I will un-nominate you as “village idiot” for the time being, but if you could address your confidence in the IPCC in light of the above and all the issues revealed by Climategate. I am truly curious.

Face it. A decade of flat temperatures is in direct conflict to IPCC model predictions. You would not be complaining if the temperatures had risen the last decade. Actually, temperature had been going up until 1998, and then have been flat ever since. That’s 14 years. It’s worse than we thought! Cherry-pick or not, it is significant to have a 14 year cooling period.

The beginning of the scientific method is the statement of a falsifiable hypothesis.

It cannot just be *any* falsifiability (i.e., you can show that AGW is false by showing that humans don’t exist, but the fact that humans *do* exist is not nearly sufficient to show that AGW is true), it must be falsifiability that is both necessary and sufficient to imply that the hypothesis is correct.

For all of those that believe in AGW, and that it will be “bad”, please, let’s start this conversation with your falsifiable hypothesis statement. If you can’t construct one of your own, feel free to quote a falsifiable hypothesis statement from *anyone* you believe to be an authority on the matter.

My anticipation is that all we’ll hear from the warmists on this are crickets…

You can only physically explain the observed globally averaged temperature record over the last 40 years, which has shown a statistically significant increase, using successfully tested theory from physics and in best aggrement with all the available observations/measurements for the various other variables when the increasing greenhouse gas forcing by anthropogenic emissions is included in the explanation in addition to the other known important climate drivers.

Did they tell you why you only go back 40 years with that hypothesis? Back in the 70′s CO2 levels were rapidly increasing but temperatures were dropping, and people were in a panic because we thought we were entering an ice age.

In all cases, when you only measure a signal from the bottom of the previous trough to the current peak, you will see an increase. You could be measuring a sine wave or the audio waveform from a Jimmy Hendrix album and you’ll get the same result and reach the wrong conclusions if you try to explain the data with any linear or monotonically increasing function. All of the CO2 theories break down if extended back prior to the 1970′s, and they are also breaking down when extended past 1998. They only work even a little bit when matched against the upslope between the trough and the peak.

“Did they tell you why you only go back 40 years with that hypothesis?”

Who is “they”?

“Back in the 70′s CO2 levels were rapidly increasing but temperatures were dropping, and people were in a panic because we thought we were entering an ice age.”

And what statement is supposed to be refuted by this, except the claim that CO2 was the only climate driver that can affect the temperature, which has been made by no one. At least I have never heard or read it in any statement I know made by climate scientists.

“All of the CO2 theories break down if extended back prior to the 1970′s, and they are also breaking down when extended past 1998.”

I don’t know what you mean with “all of the CO2 theories”. What are the statements made in those “CO2 theories” that allegedly “break down” and why? You will have to be more specific. Otherwise you are just babbling.

“Your stupid models cannot account for the 30 year cooling period from the 1940′s to 1970′s. Care to explain why the earth cooled while CO2 levels were increasing?”

How would you know? You are utterly clueless regarding the science. That happens if one blindy beliefs the opinions in the denier blogs and just copies his/her own opinions from there. For instance, you don’t know anything about how the models are constructed and how climate simulations are done. See your claim about “all forcings” missing in the models. And you don’t know any of the scientific papers. You don’t even know how a proper statistical analyses regarding a trend is done, Mr. engineer. Better stay with the things you know that have nothing to do with science.

And only clueless ones, e.g. deniers like you, believe that we/I claim CO2 was the only climate driver that could affect the global temperature record so that we/I allegedly couldn’t explain the somewhat cooling trend in the record from the 40s to the 70s.

Fact is instead, we explain the temperature record a the effect from a combination of all relevant climate drivers and their changes in time plus natural variability in the coupled system. And that’s how it is done in the models. The temperature record, e.g., in the 20th century, including from the 40s to the 70s and after, up today is alway the result of the combination of the different relevant climate drivers that are present: solar acitivity, greenhouse gases, ozone changes, volcanic stratospheric aerosols, many types of natural and anthropogenic radiation reflecting and absorbing tropospheric aerosols plus the internal dynamics of the coupled system.

The models can reproduce (not necessarily perfectly, though) the cooling in the 40s to 70s: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-9-10.html

The cooling in the 40s to 70s was likely produced by an increase in the reflecting aerosol concentration. This increase in aerosols was also the reason why some scientist advocated the hypotheses that the cooling effect could trigger an ice age. CO2 itself hadn’t had such a big effect yet back then as it has today. The CO2 mixing ratio was still only at about 310 ppm in 1950, i.e., an increase of only about 30 ppm from 1800 to 1950. Only in recent decades, CO2 has become more and more the dominant climate driver. Since 1950, CO2 has increased from the about 310 ppm to 392 ppm today. And the strong increase continues, increasing the dominance of CO2 among all the other climate drivers on the temperature anomaly record even more. But this doesn’t mean that other climate drivers don’t have any effect at all anymore. Aerosols are an important climate driver. Also solar activity is not negligible. The difference in the solar radiative forcing between minimum and maximum of the 11-year solar cycle is about 0.3 W/m^2. This equals about a little bit more than the current increase of the forcing due to CO2 per decade (0.28 W/m^2 from 1995-2005). The radiative forcing due to CO2 is basic physics, although even basic physics are rejected by the most notoric ones among the deniers.

Here is a nice illustrative graphic of the contributions from different climate drivers to the total temperature record:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Climate_Change_Attribution.png

Only after the 1960s, CO2 has become more and more the dominant climate driver.

And now, you are allowed to reply with the usual denier hysterics, like these were all “lies”, “fraud”, “manipulation”, “conspiracy”. Now bring your usual smearing and accusations against scientist, because that’s essentially all what the deniers have to offer. Well, and to not forget the desire to prosecute scientists in a McCarthy like manner.

Well, if CO2 is now in the driver’s seat, why has there been no statistically significant warming these last 15 years? According to you, the temperature should be exploding.

No, not according to me. According to me, the temperature should be following the combined forcings, overlaid by natural variability.

Why is the warming of the last 15 years not statistically significant?

Firstly and mostly because there is natural variability in the system, the most important one El Nino/Southern Oscillation. The data record has to be long enough to see a statistically robust CO2-signal that is stronger than the natural variability. 15 years are not long enough.

Secondly, the forcing difference between solar maximum and minimum is about 0.3 W/m^2. Increase of radiative forcing due to CO2 over a decade amounts to about the same magnitude. Thus, the counteracting effect of the deeper and longer lasting solar cycle minimum of the last cycle is not negligible over 10 to 15 years.

If the oceans warm, they release CO2 into the atmosphere. Could it be that warming precedes the build up of CO2 in the atmosphere? Could it?

Well, obviously you have heard something about it, but you still don’t know much about it.

From what I can see, it seems that the El Nino of 1997-1998 is what caused all the warming over the last 30 years. There was not much warming from 80 till 97 and there has been no significant warming since.

So the only forcing we have is a short burst of El Nino in 97/98, which doesn’t say much for CO2 forcing, does it?

As for CO2 released from warming oceans, as little as I do know it seems a tad more than what you possess. Thanks for the non-answer answer.

What is interesting to me is that the so-called ‘skeptics’ never produce any valid scientific evidence to challenge the findings of genuine climate scientists. The so-called ‘skeptics’ focus mainly on slandering decent and honest scientists, which suggests that they are constructing a conscious hoax to deny AGW without actually having any valid evidence to support that position. The occasional pseudoscientific points that they apologetically roll out are readily debunked by the real evidence.

All decent and honest climate scientists (and even some not so decent and honest ones such as Lindzen and Spencer) acknowledge the global warming effect of CO₂ – the scientific debate is over the strength of natural feedbacks from water vapour, reduced snow and ice cover, and many other short- and long-term climate responses. Our knowledge of modern data and palaeoclimate changes (e.g. the glacial/interglacial cycles of the last million years or so) shows that feedbacks are large and positive, meaning that our global warming impact will be greatly amplified by the responses of physical and biological systems.

The antics of venal and politically-motivated ‘skeptics’ in denying the reality of climate science mean that there is now no realistic chance of avoiding the 2°C of global warming which is universally acknowledged as constituting a dangerous level of climate change. We can expect this level of warming by about 2040, so we really need to be allocating large amounts of money to studies of how to adapt to a global climate that modern human civilisation has never experienced.

The above study examined IPCC AR4 climate models and ran them to see if they could reproduce known climate of the 20th century. The scientists concluded:

“It is claimed that GCMs provide credible quantitative estimates of future climate change, particularly at continental scales and above. Examining the local performance of the models at 55 points, we found that local projections do not correlate well with observed measurements. Furthermore, we found that the correlation at a large spatial scale, i.e. the contiguous USA, is worse than at the local scale.”

Pielke Sr., R.A., and R.L. Wilby, 2011

Findings from the above study:

“As a necessary condition for an accurate prediction, multidecadal global climate model simulations must include all first-order climate forcings and feedbacks. However, they do not. Current global multidecadal predictions are unable to skillfully simulate regional forcing by major atmospheric circulation features such as from El Niño and La Niña and the South Asian monsoon”

I could cite many more studies But the bottom line is as follows:

The IPCC in their AR4 “Working Goup I” report makes temperature and rainfall projections all the way the the year 2100 using climate models. In the “Working Group ll” portion of the study, they then define climate change impacts based on those model projections.

The problem is that the IPCC failed to “scientifically” validate their models. Climate models are a hypothesis of how the earths climate system behaves. As with all scientific hypotheses, they must be vetted by the tenants of the scientific method, a major component being “test your hypothesis against real world data” (i.e. it must be falsifiable). If a model makes projections to the year 2100, it must be rigorously tested against real world data to the year 2100. The only way to validate a model is to have it predict the future with the required accuracy, a sufficient number of times, so that predictions, when compared with the hard measured data, could not have occurred by chance.

The IPCC presents these future impacts as pristine science, but in reality all their scary future climate impacts are un-scientific rubbish. The models have been proven to be failures, and woefully lack all real world climate forcings.

Icarus, and you want to spend trillions of dollars based on faulty science? Maybe all you “hand-wringing”, “alarm sounding” lemmings should go back to school and learn something about real science. Whatever….. be happy in all your delusions.

“….models produce precipitation approximately twice as often as that observed and make rainfall far too lightly. This finding reinforces similar findings from other studies based on surface accumulated rainfall measurements. The implications of this dreary state of model depiction of the real world are discussed.”

“…….extended calculation using coupled runs confirms the earlier inference from the AMIP runs that underestimating the negative feedback from cloud albedo and overestimating the positive feedback from the greenhouse effect of water vapor over the tropical Pacific during ENSO is a prevalent problem of climate models.”

• Despite the constant promotion and the resulting shift of water scientists towards such extended uses and adaptations, the key issue remains: Climate model outputs should not be used extensively and injudiciously for hydrological and water management applications.

• GCMs have been found to perform poorly on monthly to climatic scales (Anagnostopoulos et al., 2010, Nyego-Origamoi et al., 2010), and it is even more doubtful whether they can provide a credible basis on finer scales for prediction of future flood regimes.

• According to Koutsoyiannis (2010) this may not be a defect of current climate models, but may reflect the intrinsically unpredictable character of climate.

There is no “universal acknowledgement” of a future 2°C of global warming. Only with those who believe (and do not question) the hype of the IPCC reports.

And what makes Anagnostopoulos et al.’s study “real scientific studies by real scientists”? Because it seems to satisfy your confirmation bias? In contrast to all those studies, the results of which you don’t like?

Neither you nor Anagnostopoulos et al. obviously understand the crucial difference between weather simulations and climate simulations. Anagnostopoulus et al. “falsify” the ability of climate models to reproduce the one individual realization real climate follows among all possible realizations. But climate simulations are not designed to reproduce the one individual real world climate realization. Doing this would mean solving an initial value problem. There are principal problems with that (chaotic character of weather). Climate simulations do not solve initial value problems. The initial values are arbitrary for climate simulations. Climate simulations are supposed to reproduce the statistical properties (e.g., mean, variance) of the population of all possible climate realizations for a given set of boundary conditions. The ability of climate models to do this can’t be tested by correlating individual realizations of climate simulations with the real world climate. There is a reason why climate simulations are done as ensemble simulations.

The basic assumptions in the Anagnostopoulos et al.’s study are already very wrong. What they do methodically is like comparing the probability density function (PDF) of a physical variable with a single data point of the physical variable and then claiming the PDF has been falsified because the data point is not the same as the mean value of the PDF.

Are you aware that two of the three reviewers rejected the paper and it was published anyway? (Reference: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02626667.2011.610758)

But according to you, the paper is great science by real scientist, huh?

“The IPCC presents these future impacts as pristine science, but in reality all their scary future climate impacts are un-scientific rubbish.”

I challenge you to provide the specific evidence where the IPCC makes statements where future impacts are presented as “pristine science”, although those statements are “un-scientific rubbish”.

From everything I have read from you so far I very much suspect that you derive your opinions and claims about the IPCC from second or third hand sources, probably from some pseudo-skeptic opinion blogs.

“The models have been proven to be failures, and woefully lack all real world climate forcings.”

Really! So your assertion is that solar forcing, greenhouse gas forcings, volcanic aerosol forcings, sulfate aerosol forcing, carbonaceous aerosol forcing, mineral dust aerosol forcing, indirect forcing by aerosols are all no real world climate forcings. And which one would be the “real world” climate forcings that needed be considered instead?

The scientists rigorously defend their paper point by point against the criticism. If you have some meaningful critique, then submit it to the HSJ for publishing, otherwise you are just talking out of your south end.

Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. weighed in on the above study and had this to say:

“This Comment/Reply illustrates, in my view, the continued pressure on Editors not to publish papers that conflict with the IPCC perspective of the climate system and the ability of global climate models to provide skillful predictions decades into the future. Instead of showing in a quantifiable manner any flaws in the work by Demetris Koutsoyiannis and colleages, Huard 2011 resorts to semantics and criticisms of the review process. Whenever authors resort to such arguments, it illustrates that they cannot refute the substance of the research study.”

Did I say anything like that? I’m totally satisfied with being able to present my differing view here. I do not expect anything at all how you take it. And whether you are able to present any arguments against my criticism of the flawed assumptions in the Anagnostopoulos et al. paper regarding climate simulations is also totally up to you. You can’t refute them logically with the Pielke, Sr. quote, because this quote is not a scientific argument. It’s a political claim.

So which is it? Are the IPCC stated climate impacts based on sound science or not? I thought AR4 was a scientific document. So is the IPCC making wild a** guesses, or are they basing their conclusions on sound science?

In the forward to the AR4 Working Group ll Report, it states:

This latest assessment by the IPCC will form the standard scientific reference for all those concerned with the consequences of climate change, including students and researchers in ecology, biology, hydrology, environmental science, economics, social science, natural resource management, public health, food security and natural hazards, and policymakers and managers in governments, industry and other organisations responsible for resources likely to be affected by climate change.

Make up your mind. With you it’s like that “Whack a Mole” game at the carnival. You’re all over the place and hard to pin down.

And as far as models go, even IPCC scientist Jagadish Shukla admitted in a email,

… It is inconceivable that policymakers will be willing to make billion-and trillion-dollar decisions for adaptation to the projected regional climate change based on models that do not even describe and simulate the processes that are the building blocks of climate variability.

Perhaps my phrasing was not clear enough before. What I’m asking you is to present specific scientific statements from the AR4 report, volume 1, “The Physical Science Basis”, which are central for the case of anthropogenic global warming, which are not supported by accompanying scientific evidence. The burden of evidence for your assertions about the IPCC report is on your side. I’m waiting.

Like I totally believe you are some climate modeling expert. Uh huh. Like I said. If you take issue with the the Anagnostopoulos et al. paper, then your beef is with them, and have your criticism paper published in HSJ. That’s how science is done.

thephysicsguy quoted following fragment from the study by Stephens et al. (2010):

“….models produce precipitation approximately twice as often as that observed and make rainfall far too lightly. This finding reinforces similar findings from other studies based on surface accumulated rainfall measurements. The implications of this dreary state of model depiction of the real world are discussed.”

I’m not quite sure what the quote was supposed to prove, probably the assertion that models are not able to produce anything similar to real world climate.

However, this quote, which is from the abstract of the study, is just another example for cherry picking by pseudo skeptics. The quote is about the skills to reproduce real world precipitation on a smaller spatial and temporal scale.

Following statement in the abstract preceding the quote was left out: “We show that the time integrated accumulations of precipitation produced by models closely match observations when globally composited. However,…”

And in the discussion part of the paper, the authors state:

“2. The comparison of the observed global mean accumulated precipitation with simulated data from five different models reveals a remarkable level of agreement (Figure 2b). While not entirely unexpected given the basic energy balance control on accumulation, this result nevertheless suggests that the global mean atmospheric energy budget of the models studied is close to reality. The agreement between model and observations begins to break down when regional accumulations are considered…”

The results from this validation study suggest that we can have more confidence in the skills of the evaluated models to predict the globally mean precipitation and energy balance. However, using the models for regional predictions, or for downscaling studies is much more problematic.

And what does the IPCC report 2007 say about model performance? This can be found for instance here regarding precipitation: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch8s8-3-1-2.html

Again, second or third hand sources like pseudo-skeptic opinion blogs, from where thephysicsguy probably copied the quote fragment, are not reliable sources to get informed about climate science and the findings of scientific studies.

Try this on for size. “Global temperatures measured since 2005 are incompatible with the IPCC model predictions made in 2007 by WG1 in AR4. All subsequent temperature data from 2006 to 2011 lies between 1 and 6 standard deviations below the model predictions. The data show with > 90% confidence level that the models have over-exaggerated global warming.”

Seeing as how the author of the blog comment has a Bsc in Physics, a PhD in High Energy Physics, worked as a research fellow at CERN for 3 years, Rutherford Lab for 2 years and the JET Nuclear Fusion experiment for 5 years – please explain how the analysis of how the evaluation of the AR4 models versus the observed data is wrong. Moreover, the two ClimateGate email releases clearly demonstrate the corruption on the “peer review” process within “climate science” – this topic has been thoroughly discussed on a number of websites. So your “peer reviewed” journal publication as a benchmark of scientific validity has been thoroughly tainted by the unethical and unscientific actions of number of the prominent climate scientists involved with the IPCC.

“Seeing as how the author of the blog comment has a Bsc in Physics, a PhD in High Energy Physics, worked as a research fellow at CERN for 3 years, Rutherford Lab for 2 years and the JET Nuclear Fusion experiment for 5 years”

He still hasn’t got any credentials in climate science. So he still is a layman in the field. And it still doesn’t change anything about the fact that anyone can claim anything and it’s opposite in opinion blogs w/o being mandated to back up any claims in a rigoros scientific manner and w/o being put under scrutiny by scientific peers. And that’s the difference between opinion blogs and scientific publications. Not that every scientific publication always fullfills those standards. But the bar is there. Opinion blogs don’t have any bars. They have devote followers instead.

“please explain how the analysis of how the evaluation of the AR4 models versus the observed data is wrong.”

I can name you four things that are wrong, right away.

1. The assumption and the methodology how the calculations, e.g., how the standard deviations were calculated (standard deviations of what?), and how the comparisons were done are not explained. For this alone, the article would fail as a scientific publication. Scientific references are missing too.

2. The comparison is made w/o uncertainty range in the model projections. Those projections aren’t single curves, in contrast to how it is presented there. Instead, they cover a range for each scenario. For instance, the projected increase for the A1Fl scenario is 2.4 to 6.4 K for 2100, not just one single number. Some uncertainty range is displayed on the right side, but it can’t be seen whether the real temperature curve is within or outside the error bar.

3. The comparison doesn’t adjust for the differences in the forcings due to the climate drivers between real world and model simulations. The simulations assumed somewhat idealized scenarios of the change in time of the climate drivers for the future, e.g., the 11-year solar cycle is just always the same in those simulations, since we don’t know how solar cycles develop in the future. As you probably know, the most recent solar cycle had a lower minimum with a longer duration than the previous few cycles. This has likely some effect on the globally averaged temperature. Without such an adjustment for the differences in the forcing, one can’t draw proper conclusions about the model skills to reproduce real climate. Differences could be due to lacking model skills or differences in the forcings between real world and simulations. For the model with the highest skills the probability will be highest that the results from the model simulations differ from reality then.

4. Why only show HadCRUT3? Why not a comparison to the other surface temperature records? HadCRUT3 is the one with the smallest anomalies over the last decade. The observational data sets have also uncertainty ranges. Not saying HadCRUT3 shouldn’t be used, but a proper comparison should also include the other surface temperature analyses based on observations, particularly if they changed the picture somewhat. Here, it looks like HadCRUT3 was cherry picked because it appears to support the desired conclusion best.

“Moreover, the two ClimateGate email releases clearly demonstrate the corruption on the “peer review” process within “climate science” – this topic has been thoroughly discussed on a number of websites.”

Congratulations, Forbes, on the discovery of common knowledge! We’ve all heard the arguments and claims of the climatologists, and for me at least, they’re in one ear and out the other. So much bull. Global warming (and cooling) is a natural phenomenon, not man-made. Mankind’s influence on the cycle is probably only +/- 1% (if that). And that’s the way it is, folks! Global warming is a natural cycle.

In the modern age of computers I can search each morning for news articles from just about everyone.

Due to the absurdity of people like you who go on and on about global warming without once mentioning the basic facts that the average temperature of our collection of temperature measuring stations around the world is indeed going up. (See NASA page…) Sure arguing that the models aren’t accurate blah blah blah. Still the temperatures are going up.

Due to the absurity of these articles I am forced to conclude that Forbes is a quacks news organization. Forbes and Fox.

A little perspective is required. Our temperature records are very short. They go back to about 1850. There was a cold period called The Little Ice Age that ended about that time. And now the earth is recovering from that cold period. About half of the increase in temperature since then occurred before CO2 levels began to rise.

From the mid 1940′s to the mid 1970′s the earth had a 30 year cooling trend all while CO2 levels exploded. And now since 1998, the earth has shown a mild cooling period. So, something is “quacky” with your AGW hypothesis blah blah blah, and temperatures are not rising as the climate models have predicted, blah blah blah, which is not the fault of Forbes and Fox…….blah blah blah., but the “quacky” hypothesis…. blah blah blah.

This statement lacks any scientific validity, since a statistically robust trend analysis can’t be done for such a short time scale, and it is based on cherry picking of data by using a start point that is most convenient and then by drawing a line to a convenient end point to make the trend claim. Funny, if this is done by someone who makes bold assertions about the scientifc validity or the lack of it of findings of studies done by people who actually work and publish in the field. This is an example that illustrates how pseudo skeptics easily lower the bars regarding scientific rigorosity as soon as it is convenient for their beliefs.

If you can’t handle simple math, in a non-science blog, well, I don’t know what to tell you. Peter Gleick had the same problem. He insisted there was no pause in the warming, when the data was staring him right in the face. And then he went wacko and did the Fakegate thing.

But you are saying that the warming has increased since 1998? Sure. Whatever makes you happy.

What I said was that there can’t be made any scientifically valid statement about the presence or absence of a warming trend from the temperature data series, when the data series is not sufficiently long for a statistically robust trend analysis. If you read this statement as “warming has increased since 1998″, I can’t help you with your distorted perception that makes you not understand what is actually said.

So if no conclusions can be drawn from the period from 1998 to 2012, why can an entire multi-billion dollar research program be based on the period from 1983 to 1998? It’s the same length, yet the first time span is not only deemed significant but claimed to provide irrefutable confirmation of a theory, while the second half of the interval is rejected as too short to show anything.

Perhaps you’ve seen this, Peter: Here’s a fine critique of the AR5 WG1 drafts, by a Dutch scientist/reviewer,

POST-MODERN SCIENCE AND THE SCIENTIFIC LEGITIMACY OF THE IPCC’S WG1 AR5 DRAFT REPORT Arthur Rörsch, The Netherlands (First edition of a working paper, submitted to local authorities)

Small PDF download, 139kB.

Bastiat had rent-seekers and progressives nailed almost 2 centuries ago: “The more one examines these “forward-looking” schools of thought, the more one is convinced that at bottom they rest on nothing but ignorance proclaiming itself infallible and demanding despotic power in the name of this infallibility. “

I have read a small part of Rorsch’s paper. That was enough. When someone leads with assertions to do with Post-Modern Science my eyes glaze over and the alarm bells start ringing immediately.

Then shortly I ran into it this little gem:

“The ‘evidence’ that the IPCC relies upon is not empirical, but rather is largely based on previously presented hypotheses on the radiation transfer processes that operate within an atmospheric column.

But how do these processes work out in the real atmosphere on a global scale? In order to answer this question, IPCC’s modellers use deterministic General Circulation Models…”

This guy either hasn’t got a clue what he is talking about, or he is engaging in serious bulls^!t and should be ignored accordingly.

Radiation transfer processes in an air-column are analysed using computer programs called Radiative Transfer Codes. THEY ARE NOT CLIMATE MODELS. Not in the slightest. They use a range of mathematical techniques to apply the Radiative Transfer Equation to a column of air with a fixed vertical temperature profile, known gas mixtures and known pressure/density gradients. They then apply the spectroscopic properties of a range of gasses present in the air column to compute the fluxes of IR within the air column, its absorption and re-emission from an array of data on the properties of the gases.

He is right that their is a hypothesis about how the processes involved work. But it is a hypothesis (actually a number of related hypotheses) that have been vastly explored both theoretically and experimentally for nearly a century.

Starting in the 1960′s, when computers start to become more than toys, computer programs were developed to produce ever more detailed and sophisticated analyses of the data to predict what we would expect to see under a range of circumstances. And then these predictions were compared to direct observations. Rorsch (and many others) seem to think that these predictions are based just on laboratory observations.

Wrong.

The laboratory observations, under a huge range of conditions, coupled with a vast body of knowledge about the underlying physics of WHY the observations are what they are – this dates all the way back to Einstein in 1905 – are then used as input data to then predict what Infra-Red (IR) spectrum we should expect to see under any particular circumstances in the real world.

These predictions are then compared to observations – looking up from the grounds, down from high-flying aircraft, satellites etc. Looking at different air columns – tropical, temperate, polar, summer, winter, cloudy, not, over land, over ocean. And this has been going on for nearly 1/2 a century as the Radiative Transfer Codes have become more sophisticated, as the spectroscopic data has become more detailed, and as the observation methods have become more precise.

And the ‘hypothesis’ has stood up incredibly well. We can now predict what the IR spectrum will look like under particular circumstances with incredible detail, verified by observations.

For example, by looking at air columns from different parts of the world we get a very detailed test of how well the RTC’s calculate the effects of very different amounts of water in the atmosphere.

And this understanding isn’t just used in Climate Science. This same knowedge, the same programs have been used to predict and analyse the characteristics of the atmospheres of other planets – did you know that Nitrogen, which is not a GH gas here on Earth, is the main GH gas in the very different conditions on Neptune?

One of the important sources of information used for both Weather Prediction and Climate Research comes from satelites that measure air temperature, moisture content etc. This comes from exactly the same science – the application of solutions to the Radiative Transfer Eqn to microwave emissions from Oxygen molecules.

And this knowledge goes beyond even that. It has military implications. Ballistic Missile Early Warning Satelites couldn’t work without this knowledge. Heat Seeking Air-to-Air missiles wouldn’t work without an understanding of it. Even you microwave oven wouldn’t work without it.

So in Science what do we call a hypothesis that has been exhaustively tested in a wide range of conditions and passed with flying colours?

A Theory. To the man in the street, a Theory sounds all very unsure. But in the language of Science, a Hypothesis is still speculative. A Theory is something that has been put through the wringer again and again and survived. A Theory is something that is Pretty Damn Certain.

So Rorsch then says “These models, in which the climate forcing effect of CO2 is assumed as a given”. Bulls^!t again. The Radiative Transfer impacts of CO2 and other gases are understood with a high degre of accuracy after a century of intensive work. So it is not ‘asssumed’. It is calculated from detailed and extremely well tested and validated science.

So who is Rorsch?

Here is how he describes himself in the paper:

“Dr Arthur Rörsch has a degree in chemical engineering from the University of Delft (1957),and a PhD from the University of Leiden (1963). He is a knight in the order of the Dutch Lion(1994). His major position was member, subsequently vice-president, of the board of management of the Netherlands Organisation for Applied research, TNO, (1979-1994) with special responsibility for the research fields Public Health, Food & Agriculture, and Environment. As a student he was secretary of the department ‘Delft’ of the Netherlands Association for Meteorology and Astronomy. On a European level he was involved in committees on the assessment of the quality of EU projects and the performance of scientific institutions. As Secretary-General of the European Molecular Biological Conference (a political body of 10 member states at the time), he has been active at the interface between science and government policy. As chairman of the National (Dutch) Council for Agricultural research he worked for four years (1995-1999) on the development of scenario’s and forecasting projections from a theoretical and application point of view. As a member of the scientific advisory board of the Dutch popular science journal ‘Natuur, Wetenschap and Techniek’ (1970-2009), he has also a major interest in the quality of information provided by the scientific community to the public through modern science journalism.”

So he studied Chemical Engineering,worked in Public Health, Agriculture and Environment, he has worked in policy areas, was an editor of a fairly generalist scientific journal ‘Nature, Science & Technology’, has an interest science journalism and had an intereest in his student days in a society dealing with meteorology and astronomy.

But he doesn’t have a clue about the difference between a radiative transfer code (never having studied physics or spectroscopy apparently) and a GCM.

However he seems perfectly comfortable with launching into a critique based on his ignorance of the subject and strange notions of Post-Modern Science etc.

So the really interesting question is what drives someone to make a fool of themselves by ttying to sound knowledgable so far outside their field of expertice? He is claiming some psychic understanding of how GCM’s work for example when he clearly has no knowledge of them whatsoever; just his uninformed suppositions.

So what is stuck in his craw, what as so got his goat that he has to make a fool of himself like this?

Why does the idea of AGW lead a small percentage of people to behave so strangely?

Because it really is a simple proposition. We have a problem with how we currently organise out affairs, that is likely to be seriously bad for our descendents. Therefore, we reorganise our affairs so that we prevent this problem.

I put up a length post to brianfh about how Rorsch doesn’t understand the difference between RTC’s and GCM’s and that RTC’s are extremely well validated and understood. And you come back with comments about GCM’s. To have a conversation with someone you actually have to listen to them.

Instead all you offer up is the recitation of your own internal monologue. You really are just a stuck record economart …….scrcchhh…….scrcchhh…….scrcchhh…….scrcchhh…….scrcchhh…….

It doesn’t matter what you call them, they are still computer programs that have nothing to do with reality as seen by the man on the street or the scientist in the lab.

CO2 has no forcing effect. There is no such thing as back radiation. CO2 is a trace gas comprising about .038% of the atmosphere. Most CO2 is located right at our feet, due to its specific gravity. CO2 is not a well mixed gas, and this confirmed by NASA. Water is the great greenhouse gas, not CO2. If CO2 were such a potent GHG, then why are there no CO2 heat generators keeping us all so warm?

Sorry to be a broken record, but it seems that some people never learn anything.

And I am sorry to discount your little RTC or GCM or whatever acronym this AGW BS goes by these days.

“Most CO2 is located right at our feet, due to its specific gravity” Wow Dude!

Then don’t bend over, you might pass out. And don’t drive down into any deep valleys, they are death traps. And has nobody told coal miners that they all need to wear aqualung’s when they go down the mine?

And sorry to burst you bubble, but that backradiation? It has been observed and measured for decades.

But you are sort of right with this “they are still computer programs that have nothing to do with reality as seen by the man on the street”

Because the man in the streat, every single one of us lives our lives with virtually no experience of reality. We live our lives unable to experience 99.9999999% of reality. Right now, at 159 metres below the surface of the Pacific off the coast of Tuvalu, how many fish are down there and what type are they. I don’t know the answer to that and neither do you. But there is an answer, it is part of reality. But we live our lives permanently ignorant of it. Have you ever considered that ‘reality’ as experienced by the man in the street actually isn’t reality!

That the human condition is such that we live our lives profoundly disconnected from reality, in tiny little bubbles called ‘our lives’. That is why we have things like science. To give us access to the vastness of reality beyond our direct personal experience.

You and I sit here at our computers, able to hurl jibes at each other as a direct result of things we are totally unable to perceive – the small number of atoms added to layers of silicon to procuce N & P junctions that make up the semi-conductors inside our computers, the Internet routers and switches that make our conversation possible.

As for discounting RTC’s (which you seem pathologically unable understand are totally different from GCM’s), perhaps in that case you should call the Pentagon to tell them that all the Early-Warning Anti-Ballistic Satellites have just stopped working because yo have ‘discounted’ the RTC’s used to analyse the IR Signatures of Ballistic Missile launches as seen through the atmosphere.

So, yes, I agree with you completely – it seems that some people never learn anything. Simple suggestion economart. When posting comments on-line, don’t sit in front of a mirror.

CO2 does not have a specific gravity greater than air? Well, that is wonderful news. Clearly you don’t read much. Thanks to the fact that it is a trace gas of .04% and that winds tend to take it for a spin, we can bend over and not die. With Oxygen running at near 21%, there is plenty to go around.

So back radiation has been measured for decades. If so, then where are all these CO2 heat generators? I don’t see any. If CO2 is the magical source of so much power, then why do we neglect it so?

This is why we neglect it.

#### Back-radiation cannot add heat to the earth’s surface - global warming and carbon dioxide hype and hysteria otherwise the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics are meaningless. global warming and carbon dioxide hype and hysteria CO2 displaying an absorption-line spectrum also informs us that it is a cool gas global warming and carbon dioxide hype and hysteria surrounding the warmer earth and cool cannot heat warm. global warming and carbon dioxide hype and hysteria Even an actual greenhouse has no re-radiation “greenhouse effect”. global warming and carbon dioxide hype and hysteria #####

That spells it out in pretty drastic terms. Its a fraud. A cooler substance can never heat a warmer substance. That is elementary physics.

Now you speak of atoms, which have never been seen. Its a theory. As long as that theory accords with reality, it is accepted. The moment it diverges, do they trash reality, or do they trash the theory?

Back radiation is a fraud. If it were true, then all these wonderful CO2 generators would be everywhere. But they are not. So something is gravely wrong with your AGW theory. Something has gone awry. When told it is so, all you do is assert the science is settled or that they use a tool for some other purpose. What works one place does not necessarily transfer to another.

No it isn’t, Glenn.

Now if back radiation is such a solid theory, then do explain why it has never been exploited by all those ingenious and inventive characters energetically exploiting the discoveries of science everyday?

It appears I have a mirror to lend you. Take it and hold it up to the sun and tell me what happens when you orient yourself to receive the reflected rays of that sun. Then take the mirror and place it towards the ground, and tell me what happens when you orient yourself to receive the earth’s IR energy?

Anyone who says Skeptics never produce any scientific evidence is living in a bubble protected from all the… Studies, Data, Measurments, & attemps to replicate or recreate the conclusion of catastophic AGW. It’s easy to find, But you won’t find this excluded information on your preferred sites.

When an argument is advanced that Skeptics have no real science… And then dispelled by providing the very science they wish to see, it’s usually followed by claims of incompetent results and conpiracy theory. Then the name calling. I wish they would just say”I don’t really have a viable argument so I will call you names because it makes me feel better”

Proven facts advanced by AGW are more hypothetical in natue; What would we do if?, We don’t stop runaway CO2, Flooding in Tebet due to melting glaciers, Drowning Islandaners due to rising sea level, Extinct Polar Bears, Food crops dieing due drought & extreem heat, Increased disaters… and so on all caused by AGW. The prediction of doom explained by climate models. The models don’t predict as we said then what we meant was – Heat AND cold, Rain AND drought, Sea rise AND fall, Species expansion AND extinction, Snow/no snow, Hair growth and loss all caused by AGW. Maybe it’s the Unified Theory we have been searching for. A causal factor that can make anything & everything happen is somewhat silly, and it’s not science. It’s not proof of anything.

1st category from PopTech – Antarctica, first listed paper in that category

“A doubling in snow accumulation in the western Antarctic Peninsula since 1850″, Thomas et al 2008

Abstract reads “We present results from a new medium depth (136 metres) ice core drilled in a high accumulation site (73.59°S, 70.36°W) on the south-western Antarctic Peninsula during 2007. The Gomez record reveals a doubling of accumulation since the 1850s, from a decadal average of 0.49 mweq y−1 in 1855–1864 to 1.10 mweq y−1 in 1997–2006, with acceleration in recent decades. Comparison with published accumulation records indicates that this rapid increase is the largest observed across the region. Evaluation of the relationships between Gomez accumulation and the primary modes of atmospheric circulation variability reveals a strong, temporally stable and positive relationship with the Southern Annular Mode (SAM). Furthermore, the SAM is demonstrated to be a primary factor in governing decadal variability of accumulation at the core site (r = 0.66). The association between Gomez accumulation and ENSO is complex: while sometimes statistically significant, the relationship is not temporally stable. Thus, at decadal scales we can utilise the Gomez accumulation as a suitable proxy for SAM variability but not for ENSO. ”

Where is the argument against AGW in this gman?

They are discussing how snow accumulation in one location in Antarctica is more correlated with the SAM than ENSO. You aren’t suggesting that AGW will necesarily mean reduced snowfall everywhere are you? In addition you need to make some investigations into recent research linking the strength of the SAM with the effects of the Antarctic Ozone Hole, allowing more UV and thus energy to reach the lower altitudes, thus causing a strengthening of the SAM.

Then this one under Ocean Acidification:

‘Modern-age buildup of CO2 and its effects on seawater acidity and salinity” Hugo A. Loáiciga

“ The impacts of increases in atmospheric CO2 since the midst of the 18th century on average seawater salinity and acidity are evaluated. Assuming that the rise in the planetary mean surface temperature continues unabated, and that it eventually causes the melting of terrestrial ice and permanent snow, it is calculated that the average seawater salinity would be lowered not more than 0.61‰ from its current 35‰. It is also calculated –using an equilibrium model of aqueous carbonate species in seawater open to the atmosphere- that the increase in atmospheric CO2 from 280 ppmv (representative of 18th-century conditions) to 380 ppmv (representative of current conditions) raises the average seawater acidity approximately 0.09 pH units across the range of seawater temperature considered (0 to 30°C). A doubling of CO2 from 380 ppmv to 760 ppmv (the 2 × CO2 scenario) increases the seawater acidity approximately 0.19 pH units across the same range of seawater temperature. In the latter case, the predicted increase in acidity results in a pH within the water-quality limits for seawater of 6.5 and 8.5 and a change in pH less than 0.20 pH units. This paper’s results concerning average seawater salinity and acidity show that, on a global scale and over the time scales considered (hundreds of years), there would not be accentuated changes in either seawater salinity or acidity from the observed or hypothesized rises in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. ”

So this paper is exploring the likely impacts on ocean salinity and pH of the expected additions of CO2 and looked at over multi-century time-scales. And they are assuming major snow & ice melt, thus supporting the expectation of AGW. Then their conclusions are roughly in line with other expectations concerning Ocean Acidification – modest changes in pH and Salinity.

What the paper does NOT look at, since this isn’t the focus of their research, is that the MAJOR impact expected from Ocean Acidification, and on time scales of decades, is a reduction in the concentration of Carbonate ions in the ocean, below the Saturation level for Carbonate. This will make it very difficult for marine organisms to prevent their Calcium Carbonate shells dissolving into the under-saturated sea water, particularly those whose shells are formed from the Aragonite form of Calcium Carbonate.

So where is the supposed argument against AGW here? They even do their analysis based on an expectation of major ice melt in line with AGW.

Could it be that PopTech has bought into the false notion that the phenomenon that has been given the label ‘Ocean Acidification’ is about the oceans becoming acidic, rather than the accurate description which it is that the consequences for carbonate as a result of pH change is the main issue. Has PopTech selected this paper as supposedly being an argument against an aspect of AGW because he actually doesn’t understand what the science of AGW is about.

Do you want me to go through 900 papers to see how many more have no applicability to AGW or are not understood well enough by PopTech to even judge whether they are pre, neutral or anti on AGW? Or are his 900+ plus papers actually science against strawman versions of the theory of AGW, rather than against the real thing?

These are just the first 2 of his 900 I looked at, but not a promising result.

Claiming Global Warming or Climate Change is fake is akin to claiming that creationists are correct, but to then not show evidence.

Climate Change deniers, like Heartland, do not have the data so they attack with innuendo and intrigue – instead of facts. And facts are very simple: over the past 300 million years, scientists determined that every rise in CO2 past 350 ppm generated an extinction event. They also determined that there has never been a faster rise in CO2 than the current rise. We are currently over 395 ppm and we will not be slowing this number.

I truly wish that the oil interests and natural resource spokespeople, like Heartland, would either put up facts and real, peer reviewed research by actual climatologist (Lord Monckton doesn’t count) or let the adults try to handle this crisis.

Do you realize what you are doing when using the term “Climate Change Denier, to characterize those who are skeptical of the IPCC climate change position? The term is an attempt to assign any ‘doubters’ with the same moral repugnance one associates with Holocaust denial. It is also an affront to those who lost loved ones in the Holocaust.

The term has absolute no place in the process of scientific discovery or debate, and you will find that real science professionals refuse to use such a pejorative term.

People who use that term want to somehow feel morally superior, and the term is an attempt to delegitimize skeptical views and portray them as immoral, stupid, or repugnant.

Equating “climate change” with the “Holocaust” is a cynical attempt to close down debate. The H-word is uttered as a kind of moral absolute that no one could possibly question.

But we do have freedom of speech in this country, so people have the right to use morally repugnant terms.

How about being an “adult” and show some class, rather than slinging ignorant and insulting terms around?

No, its not a reference to Holocaust Denial. It is a reference to the Psychological phenomenon of Denial. Read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial

The opening para is “Denial (also called abnegation) is a defense mechanism postulated by Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.[1] The subject may use:

- simple denial: deny the reality of the unpleasant fact altogether - minimisation: admit the fact but deny its seriousness (a combination of denial and rationalization) - projection: admit both the fact and seriousness but deny responsibility. ”

Also “ The concept of denial is particularly important to the study of addiction. ”

Why is addiction a relevent term. Because what Climate Change Deniers are addicted to is a Woldview, a way of looking at life and what is meaningfull to them. This Worldview is so strongly held that a threat to it constitutes an existential crisis for that person. And AGW constuitutes a threat to their Worldview. What Worldview are we talking about. We are discussing this on Forbes, a major generator for commentary in favour the hard-right view-point, extreme free market ideas, the primacy of private enterprise and that these activities are actually the principal generators of well-being and merit in our society.

So the idea of AGW in suggesting that the actions of this system, fiercely held to be so meritorious, may in fact have harmful consequences, may even require major changes to the nature of this supposedly desirable system is then a major existential threat to their Worldview. And the more strongly a person feels about this worldview the stronger the Denial. One could even describe overly extreme adherence to ANY Worldview as an addiction.

Consider some aspects of Denial:

Denial of fact In this form of denial, someone avoids a fact by lying. This lying can take the form of an outright falsehood (commission), leaving out certain details to tailor a story (omission) (in AGW this is called Cherry-Picking), or by falsely agreeing to something (assent, also referred to as “ yessing” behavior). Someone who is in denial of fact is typically using lies to avoid facts they think may be painful to themselves or others.

Denial of denial This can be a difficult concept for many people to identify with in themselves, but is a major barrier to changing hurtful behaviors. Denial of denial involves thoughts, actions and behaviors which bolster confidence that nothing needs to be changed in one’s personal behavior. This form of denial typically overlaps with all of the other forms of denial, but involves more self-delusion. Denial at this level can have significant consequences both personally and at a societal level.

Fundamental to Denial is the rejection of the existance of the Denial.

DARVO DARVO is an acronym to describe a common strategy of abusers: Deny the abuse, then Attack the victim for attempting to make them accountable for their offense, thereby Reversing Victim and Offender.

So the AGW Denialist first denies the reality of AGW, then attacks those trying to explain it’s realty to them. Since Denial of Denial is an essential bulwark holding up that persons Denial, Attacking those who challenge their Denial is an absolutely necesary psychological defense.

And the only reasonable strategy available to the Denier is to attack the messenger. Attacking the message too closely is dangerous because then they stray too close to information that threatens the Denial. Hence the limitation to Denial of Fact.

But attacking the Messenger can be engaged in with impunity because maligning the messenger is an incredibly powerful way of strengthening their Denial. Thus we have terms such as ‘warmist’, ‘alarmist’, ‘believer’, ‘fakers’, ‘frauds’, ‘scammers’, ‘hoaxers’, ‘people-haters’ etc. After a good dose of such language the Denier now feels extremely secure within their defenses.

This perhaps explains the prevalence of Deniers in the on-line world. They can get their daily dose of security by railing against these ‘others’.

And the most expectable response to my comments will be to attack the idea of looking at the psychological underpinnings of the denial – that really is striking to close to the bone, undermining the bulwarks far to much. Again, Denial of Denial.

Those who rightly question the ‘settled science” of AGW are not deniers. They are skeptics. These people question whether those dunces that proclaim the science of AGW settled really know what they are speaking of. The AGW nutjobs have records, and very poor ones, going back a few years. The theories are contrary to physics and facts. Yet, it is those who question this faulty and erroneous litany of predictions that are called psychologically disturbed.

If it is a fact in scientific enquiry that to question equates to a mental condition, then the problem lies not with the questioner. It lies with the diagnosis.

You are fully and willfully involved in ludicrous enterprise that demands rigid acceptance of the most ridiculous principles and tenets. Andy deviation from this blind adherence brings contempt.

“If it is a fact in scientific enquiry that to question equates to a mental condition”

No, but if one questions, receives answers to those questions, doesn’t listen to the answers and goes into an endless loop of ‘question, receive answer, ignore answer and repeat question’, again, and again, and again, and again…..then perhaps that actually is a mental condition. As I said, the psychological phenomenon of Denial.

We are all psychological creatures economart – its just that some of us can’t as easily admit that. And that psychology as well.

“Take this one from “environmental author” Mark Lynas who describes his blog as “something of a debating hall about climate change.”

“I wonder what sentences judges might hand down at future international criminal tribunals on those who will be partially but directly responsible for millions of deaths from starvation, famine and disease in decades ahead. I put this in a similar moral category to Holocaust denial-except that this time the Holocaust is yet to come, and we still have time to avoid it. Those who try to ensure we don’t will one day have to answer for their crimes”

Definition of delusional: Psychiatry . maintaining fixed false beliefs even when confronted with facts, usually as a result of mental illness

Kevin Trenberth, IPCC lead author lies to press about link between Global Warming and hurricanes, and then tries to “shop around” for a Japanese scientist who might support his lie. Look it up. All true.

The above is just the tip of the iceberg. And you want to call us deniers. It is you who are the flat-earthers. Look at all my posts in here. I have referred to credible scientific studies, and all you do is spout mumbo jumbo.

Extinction due to CO2? Dinosaur extinction; The Cretaceous era saw the end of the largest animals due to an asteroid impact into what is now near Mexico’s west coast. Most agree if the resulting fire storm didn’t kill them off the following “nuclear winter” effect and lack of sunlight which killed vegitation did. K-T boundry meteor events are not caused by CO2. Most reciently The Pleistocene extinction about 14700 years ago, was probably caused by solar flaring which violently melted part of the extiensive glaciation of that time causing masive “glacialclastic flow” flooding and killing almost all large animals in North America and around the world. More extinction examples I can give, but why. CO2 doesn’t appear to cause or influence solar flaring. The most influential souces of extinction probably lie outside the Earth atmosphere; Asteroid impact, Cosmic dust, Sun Cycles, Galactic center & Neutron Star blast, Solar Coronal Mass Ejections & the natual 26000 yr/13000 yr galactic cycles. All of these have probably thousands of times more influence on Earth’s historical climate than CO2.

Waving his cane towards the big top, Heartland’s new barker on the Forbes midway raves of events attracting ” more than 3,000 scientists, journalists, and interested citizens from all over the world.”

Balderdash. Reporters counted barely 20 bona fide scientists at the largest Heartland even as its president,Joe Bast impeached himself by standing up to claim more than a hundred.

Having examined Climate Change Reconsidered I can safely testify it to be an anthology commissioned by lawyers in dire need of a book to pound, a compendium of pulp science containing the gibberings of every climate crank north of Patagonia, assembled by Heartland minion Fred Singer for a $100,000 fee.

Mr. Ferrarra owes the linked crowd political websites have provided him some spectacle more edifying than Gleick agonistes.

Seitz does not believe in discussing climate science because he does not know any. And give him a compendium of climate science he does not understand a word of what is in it. But he does know how to make heroes of crooks who steal documents.

I, for one, feel that NIPCC and Heartland have not been tough enough in their criticism of the global warming movement. It can be demonstrated that no greenhouse warming has actually been observed. The fact that claims of the existence of anthropogenic warming are fabricated was brought out in my book “What Warming?” I used satellite data to show that the late twentieth century warming, the one Hansen talked about, did not exist. It can be shown that there was no greenhouse warming during the entire 32 years of satellite observations we have. There was a short spurt of warming brought to us by the super El Nino of 1998 but it lasted only four years and was oceanic in origin. Since then, I have also proved that Arctic warming is not greenhouse warming either (E&E vol.22, No. 8, p. 1069). It started suddenly at the turn of the twentieth century, without any corresponding increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Laws of physics simply do not allow greenhouse effect to behave this way. Its cause is warm Atlantic currents bringing Gulf Stream water to the Arctic Ocean. The only other warming of the twentieth century started in 1910 and stopped in 1940, at the beginning of the Second World War. We know that carbon dioxide then was increasing slowly, as it is now, and there was no sudden increase of it in 1910 that is required to make this a greenhouse warming. Likewise, there was no decrease of atmospheric carbon dioxide when it stopped. Both of these observations rule out the greenhouse effect as cause of early twentieth century warming. Most likely it was caused by solar events as Bjørn Lomborg has suggested. With this, we can fairly say that no carbon dioxide greenhouse warming has ever been observed since the beginning of the twentieth century. But why? Ferenc Miskolczi (E&E vol. 21, No. 4, p. 243) has the answer. Using NOAA database of weather balloon observations that goes back to 1948 he was able to determine that the transmittance of the atmosphere in the infrared where carbon dioxide absorbs has not changed for 62 years. During that same time period the amount of carbon dioxide in the air increased by 21.6 percent. This means that addition of this amount or carbon dioxide to the air had no effect whatsoever upon the absorption of IR by the atmosphere. And no absorption means no greenhouse effect, case closed. This is the reason why no greenhouse effect has been detected – it does not exist.This also means that all climate models using the greenhouse effect to predict warming are dead wrong. And that “sensitivity” of temperature to doubling of carbon dioxide becomes exactly zero.

It would be nice if you actually responded to arrnoarrak’s actual commentary vice the strawman you attacked. He is talking about CO2 as a forcing agent: “we can fairly say that no carbon dioxide greenhouse warming has ever been observed since the beginning of the twentieth century.” What the warmists climate models have failed to demonstrate that the increase in atmospheric CO2 over the twentieth century was a principal or significant driver of the acknowledged warming. If you have said data proving that the increase of atmospheric CO2 is what has caused the Earth to warm, please do share – the ENTIRE scientific community awaits this revelation.

And you are some self proclaimed expert in climate science? Who cares what your credentials are. Look at the poster child for global warming, Dr. Paul Ehrlich, of Stanford. He is a total nutcase. A total dingbat. All his predictions of doom and gloom are utter failures. Who cares about your crappy “science” columns in Forbes.

History, along with true science, will validate your ramblings, though I suspect you won’t live long enough to realize it based on your picture. I am not in the least intimidated by you or your lazy “bubble-icious” advocacy science.

Listen “bubble brain”, you obviously skipped class the day the scientific method was discussed in your formative years.

Then in that case, please explain the following observations. And I stress, observations, not theory, models or mathturbation.

Total OBSERVED increase in the heat content of the climate system, mainly the oceans is around 21 10^22 joules. 90% of this is in the oceans. Atmospheric warming – the subject of all your focus on graphs of surface temperatures vs satellite data – is only 3% of this. Ice melt represents more heat than atmspheric warming.

This is 3 times the total heat flux from within the Earth. And there is no suggestion that geothermal flux has changed in anyway. So no heat source here on Earth can supply this extra energy.

To supply this heat by extracting it from water to produce ice to then pump the extracted heat into the oceans would require us to freeze over 600 TRILLION tonnes of ice, Instead we are melting 500 BILLION tonnes of ice a year.

Or to supply this much heat to another part of the climate system from the atmosphere, average air temperatures would need to drop by 42 DegC. And full Ice Ages only involved drops of 6-10 DegC.

So where has all this heat come from Arno? We aren’t talking about watching the tip of he dog’s tail here – which is what you are doing with all your graphs. This is the main game in climatology. The Dog, not its tail.

None of James Hansen’s 1988 scenarios was correct. Jame Hansen had to take a speech class because he couldn’t debate Richard Lindzen.

There are NASA scientists who don’t agree with their institutes official policy statement, such as John Christy and Roy Spencer. Additionally, a scientist named Ferenc Miskolczi left NASA because he disagreed with NASA’s official policy statement. Furthermore, James Hansen former boss, John Theon, basically thought Hansen was a crackpot.

“I appreciate the opportunity to add my name to those who disagree that global warming is man made,” Theon wrote to the Minority Office at the Environment and Public Works Committee on January 15, 2009. “I was, in effect, Hansen’s supervisor because I had to justify his funding, allocate his resources, and evaluate his results,”

“Hansen was never muzzled even though he violated NASA’s official agency position on climate forecasting (i.e., we did not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind’s effect on it). Hansen thus embarrassed NASA by coming out with his claims of global warming in 1988 in his testimony before Congress,” Theon wrote.

Theon declared “climate models are useless.” “My own belief concerning anthropogenic climate change is that the models do not realistically simulate the climate system because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit,” Theon explained. “Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results. In doing so, they neither explain what they have modified in the observations, nor explain how they did it. They have resisted making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by other scientists. This is clearly contrary to how science should be done. Thus there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy,” he added.

Most meteorologists do not believe in global warming. Please see www.forecastthefacts.org

Many scientists in the APS want the institution to change their official statement on global warming and several of them have resigned in protest, such as Ivar Giaver and Hal Lewis.

This is called getting owned in your face Jan Dumblewitz. Better go regroup and ask the hoaxers at desmockthefrock what to do.

“Most meteorologists do not believe in global warming. Please see www.forecastthefacts.org”

And how many of those “meteorologists” have done any research in the field of climate, how many of them have achieved a PhD, how many of them have even a full science degree? I do not ask the public relation officer in a hospital, if I want to know what my heart condition is.

You have to have a thick skin to participate in this blog. It’s become almost a game in here to take someone’s name or moniker, and create an outrageous insulting version of it. Sometimes I have to laugh my a** off at the silliness. But your last name is just too inviting. I’ll stop.

“Wow. You failed to respond to anything regarding the idiot Hansen’s supervisor, John Theon. Well?”

A global warming denier quotes some prepacked text that contains alleged quote fragment by Theon, from somewhere else, the source from which this was copied is not revealed. The quotes, for which no source document is provided either, contain only opinion and assertions w/o evidence. Is there anything to respond to this?

##### Our analysis concerns only temperature anomalies, not absolute temperature. Temperature anomalies are computed relative to the base period 1951-1980. The reason to work with anomalies, rather than absolute temperature is that absolute temperature varies markedly in short distances, while monthly or annual temperature anomalies are representative of a much larger region. Indeed, we have shown (Hansen and Lebedeff, 1987) that temperature anomalies are strongly correlated out to distances of the order of 1000 km. For a more detailed discussion, see The Elusive Absolute Surface Air Temperature. #####

Q. What exactly do we mean by SAT ? A. I doubt that there is a general agreement how to answer this question. Even at the same location, the temperature near the ground may be very different from the temperature 5 ft above the ground and different again from 10 ft or 50 ft above the ground. Particularly in the presence of vegetation (say in a rain forest), the temperature above the vegetation may be very different from the temperature below the top of the vegetation. A reasonable suggestion might be to use the average temperature of the first 50 ft of air either above ground or above the top of the vegetation. To measure SAT we have to agree on what it is and, as far as I know, no such standard has been suggested or generally adopted. Even if the 50 ft standard were adopted, I cannot imagine that a weather station would build a 50 ft stack of thermometers to be able to find the true SAT at its location.

Q. What do we mean by daily mean SAT ? A. Again, there is no universally accepted correct answer. Should we note the temperature every 6 hours and report the mean, should we do it every 2 hours, hourly, have a machine record it every second, or simply take the average of the highest and lowest temperature of the day ? On some days the various methods may lead to drastically different results.

Q. What SAT do the local media report ? A. The media report the reading of 1 particular thermometer of a nearby weather station. This temperature may be very different from the true SAT even at that location and has certainly nothing to do with the true regional SAT. To measure the true regional SAT, we would have to use many 50 ft stacks of thermometers distributed evenly over the whole region, an obvious practical impossibility.

Q. If the reported SATs are not the true SATs, why are they still useful ? A. The reported temperature is truly meaningful only to a person who happens to visit the weather station at the precise moment when the reported temperature is measured, in other words, to nobody. However, in addition to the SAT the reports usually also mention whether the current temperature is unusually high or unusually low, how much it differs from the normal temperature, and that information (the anomaly) is meaningful for the whole region. Also, if we hear a temperature (say 70°F), we instinctively translate it into hot or cold, but our translation key depends on the season and region, the same temperature may be ‘hot’ in winter and ‘cold’ in July, since by ‘hot’ we always mean ‘hotter than normal’, i.e. we all translate absolute temperatures automatically into anomalies whether we are aware of it or not.

Q. If SATs cannot be measured, how are SAT maps created ? A. This can only be done with the help of computer models, the same models that are used to create the daily weather forecasts. We may start out the model with the few observed data that are available and fill in the rest with guesses (also called extrapolations) and then let the model run long enough so that the initial guesses no longer matter, but not too long in order to avoid that the inaccuracies of the model become relevant. This may be done starting from conditions from many years, so that the average (called a ‘climatology’) hopefully represents a typical map for the particular month or day of the year.

Q. What do I do if I need absolute SATs, not anomalies ? A. In 99.9% of the cases you’ll find that anomalies are exactly what you need, not absolute temperatures. In the remaining cases, you have to pick one of the available climatologies and add the anomalies (with respect to the proper base period) to it. For the global mean, the most trusted models produce a value of roughly 14°C, i.e. 57.2°F, but it may easily be anywhere between 56 and 58°F and regionally, let alone locally, the situation is even worse. ####

Again, you have not understood. The text explains what problems there are with using the absolute temperature from the stations where they are measured. The use of computer simulations which is mentioned there refers to how you get global maps of the absolute temperature values despite those problems. The text explains why Hansen et al. do NOT use the absolute temperature for the GISS temperature analysis. They do NOT use computer simulations for the GISS temperature analysis. Instead, they use the anonmaly method. You likely won’t know what that is, but I’m not in the mood to explain it now.

“You still have not stated your defense of Kevin Trenberth like I’ve been asking. Not in the mood?”

I do not see the need to defense anything. What do you have to offer? Some quotes from mined private emails, which may be out of context, and you cite it without proof of source. And this is supposed to prove what? Your funny conspiracy fantasies about the IPCC?

Whatever Trenberth said in some private emails, I consider your games a distraction. The IPCC reports go through a comprehensive review process. What’s in there at the end counts, but not what someone allegedly said in an email. The scientific argument counts. If you think the IPCC report left out important research papers, bringing them in would have changed essential statements in the report, feel free to name those papers here. Otherwise, it looks again like smearing and attacking the scientists is the weapon of choice, because there is no argument on a scientic level against the IPCC report.

It does not matter whether they were private or public, they are still revealing of the motives and minds of those devious little sorcerers happily at work committing one fraud after another.

The IPCC goes through a report written by AGW devotees, which at the last level consist mostly of AGW hacks. The scientists have little to do with it. That’s why we are treated to Mann graphs that feature prominently and then disappear, or predictions that the glaciers in the Himalayas will disappear in 25 years.

This following is a link to the actual verbatim transcripts of the press conference:

http://www.ucar.edu/news/record/transcripts/hurricanes102104.shtml

The conference was in October of 2004. Landsea resigned in January of 2005.

The ACE value of hurricanes fluctuates. From 1976 to 1993 the trend was up. From 1993 to present, the trend is down. So in 2004 when Trenberth was at the press conference, the ACE value of hurricanes had been trending downward for over a decade. And Trenberth was cautioned by Chris Landsea prior to the conference regarding the current understanding of the link between hurricanes and global warming.

Landsea is one of the worlds’ top experts in hurricanes.

From the press conference:

Abhi Raghunathan, Naples Daily News: Hi, this is Abhi Raghunathan at the Naples Daily News in Florida. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, has publicly stated that global warming and climate change have had insignificant to no impact on this year’s hurricane season. Were they one of the groups you were referring to earlier when you said that some of the quotes you read in papers came from those with limited perspective?

McCarthy: This is Jim McCarthy. I presume you’re directing that to me. No, I’m not aware of the NOAA statement. Kevin referred earlier to a publication that has been influential in the kind of discussion we’re having right now which came from NOAA scientists, but I was referring to pieces that had come my way, largely op-ed pieces in newspapers throughout the East Coast, where either from the direct effect or the aftermath of these recent storms these opinions have been voiced. Kevin, you might want to comment on the NOAA piece if you’re familiar with it. I’m not.

Trenberth: I have not been aware of any official NOAA statement on this position one way or another.

What a sly devil that Trenbeth is. Landsea, of the NOAA) specifically told Trenberth what NOAA’s position was on the hurricane/global warming link. He knew what Landsea was going to write-up in the AR4 report, because Landsea told him. Maybe there was no “official statement” from NOAA, but there was a “public statement” to that effect, because even the reporter was aware of it when he/she asked the question.

Climategate emails also confirm the story, as well as Chris Landsea’s official published resignation letter.

Yes, folks. These are the type of scientists working for the IPCC. And you have the gall to condone that type of deceitful behavior, or just brush it off?

What else is IPCC lead author Trenberth lying about? He was willing to deceive and lie to have his alarmist viewpoint presented regarding hurricanes and global warming. And the Climategate emails indicate that other IPCC’ers were involved is his duplicity.

Even if your claim about Trenberth’s behavior regarding Landsea was true – who says that climate scientists who think that anthropogenic global warming was real are necessarily w/o any confirmation biases, it’s part of human nature, and most scientists are probably humans too -, the chapter in the IPCC report for which Trenberth was coordinating lead authors wasn’t written by Trenberth and Jones alone. I count additional 10 lead authors, and 66 contributing authors. Scientists from all over the world. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch3.html

In addition to that there is a comprehensive review process, again involving scientists from all over the world, before the report gets published.

Here is the list of reviewer: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/annexessannex-iii.html

The comments of reviewer are public as well: http://hcl.harvard.edu/collections/ipcc/index.html

What is your game here? Find some dirt somewhere and then suggest guilt of all the hundreds other scientists by association?

Please don’t misunderstand me. I do not think the IPCC report is flawless and above all criticism. Shortcomings have been identified, e.g., the likely underestimation of sea level rise due to global warming.

So what you want is the ocean to become more caustic for that is what happens when you go the other way. You are either heading towards neutral ph (ie fresh water) or caustic soda. Why do you want the oceans caustic?The oceans would not be acidic if you added all the co2 in the world to it.

Peter. The point of the term acidification is that the pH is moving towards the acidic end of the scale. It is currently alkaline, although only weakly and you are right, it would take something extreme to turn it even mildly acidic. But if I am in the Southern hemisphere and travelling north, I am still travelling Northerly.

But the crux of the problem that has been given the label Ocean Acidification isn’t what happens to pH. It is because of what is causing that pH change – Carbonic Acid which is what CO2 turns into when it interacts with water. Then, in several other chemical steps, this results in an increase in the number of Bicarbonate ions in the ocean and a decrease in Carbonate ions. And it is Carbonate that various marine creatures use to form theeir shells from. But in order for them to do this the Carbonate concentration in the water needs to be Saturated. if Carbonate levels fall below this concentration, any solid carbonate such as limestone of marine shells start to dissolve. In the ocean carbonate levels in deeper water, below around 1000 metres although this differs somewhat between different ocean basins, the Carbonate levels are below Saturation. So their are no creatures down there that for carbonate shells, and there is no carbonate based rock – all the rock below this depth is brown/grey, with none of the lighter colours of carbonate that you see in rtocks closer to the surface.

And as we add more CO2->Carbonic Acid->More Bicarbonate->Less Carbonate, the threshold depth for this is rising towards the surface.

Current estimates suggest that some species such as pteropods will reach critical problems in shell formation at CO2 levels in the atmosphere of around 430 ppm. – about 15-20 years from now.

##### Firstly, an increasing concentration of CO2 in the water improves the efficiency of photosynthesis in the oceans (as it does on the land), and so increases the growth of plant life in the ocean, including phytoplankton, upon which ‘graze’ zooplankton, which is food for a vast range of sea animals, including whales.

Secondly, it’s not possible through lifeless inorganic chemistry to predict what is happening with living processes. Fish pump huge quantities (hundreds of millions of tonnes annually) of available carbonate in the oceans as a byproduct of the systems that enable them to survive in high salinity. This is using the energy of life processes to buck the normal dissolved inorganic carbon equilibria. The calcium carbonate of dead calcifying organisms dissolves naturally in seawater. What stops a sea creature’s shell from dissolving away is the living creature’s continually producing more calcium carbonate, just like a land animal continually produces skin cells to replace those that are lost to the environment.

Thirdly, an increasing concentration of dissolved inorganic carbon (e.g. dissolved carbon dioxide, bicarbonate ions, carbonate ions) makes the process of laying down calcium carbonate in shells efficient. This is because there is a far greater supply of calcium ions (441ppm) in seawater than dissolved inorganic carbon (90ppm) and any increase in dissolved carbon dioxide simply pushes the reactions towards the production of more bicarbonate and carbonate ions. The reactions are reversible and in equilibria:

Add more CO2 at the left and the reaction proceeds to a greater or lesser extent to the right. Most of the additional carbon ends up as bicarbonate. Note that as the reaction is driven to the right by the dissolution of additional CO2 there is increased production of H+ ions, so acidity is increasing (= decreasing pH).

Fourthly, the situation is completely different from the case where pH is artificially lowered by adding, say, hydrochloric acid, where there would be no addition of dissolved inorganic carbon. Unfortunately, many scientists have failed to understand this basic chemistry and have conducted crude experiments on shellfish by adding mineral acids to seawater. Whilst this duly lowers the pH, it drives the equilibrium reactions in the opposite direction, so is completely invalid as an experimental model. In the equilibrium equation above, introducing mineral acid (which introduces no additional dissolved inorganic carbon) adds H+ ions on the right of the equilibrium equation, which drives the reaction to the left. The increase in H+ions (equivalent to lower pH), arises because the experimenter is tipping in mineral acid and is thereby forcing the reaction drastically to reduce carbonate and to increase dissolved carbon dioxide, which will come out of solution into the atmosphere as bubbles, decarbonizing the seawater. But if increasing atmospheric CO2 is the driver, the reaction is forced the other way; if mineral acid is the driver, the pH goes down and carbonates and possibly bicarbonates also go down. Looking at pH alone tells us absolutely nothing about the concentrations of carbonates, bicarbonates, dissolved CO2, equilibria, reaction rates or reaction directions. At the very least we also need to know the amount of dissolved inorganic carbon. Moreover, calcium carbonate dissolves in alkaline seawater (pH 8.2) 15 times faster than in pure water (pH 7.0), so it is silly, meaningless nonsense to focus on pH.

####

You can read the rest here if you wish to discover how really poor your understanding of chemistry and biology is:

#### Until recently we had very little data about real time changes in ocean pH around the world. Finally autonomous sensors placed in a variety of ecosystems “from tropical to polar, open-ocean to coastal, kelp forest to coral reef” give us the information we needed.

It turns out that far from being a stable pH, spots all over the world are constantly changing. One spot in the ocean varied by an astonishing 1.4 pH units regularly. All our human emissions are projected by models to change the world’s oceans by about 0.3 pH units over the next 90 years, and that’s referred to as “catastrophic”, yet we now know that fish and some calcifying critters adapt naturally to changes far larger than that every year, sometimes in just a month, and in extreme cases, in just a day.

Data was collected by 15 individual SeaFET sensors in seven types of marine habitats. Four sites were fairly stable (1, which includes the open ocean, and also sites 2,3,4) but most of the rest were highly variable (esp site 15 near Italy and 14 near Mexico) . On a monthly scale the pH varies by 0.024 to 1.430 pH units. #####

The balances between these equations mean 91% of carbon is in the form of bicarbonate (HCO3–), 8% as carbonate (CO3-–), and less than 1% is found as CO2 and H2CO3.

For Eq. 2, in seawater at the preindustrial ocean pH of 8.25, the equilibrium ratio of the left side, carbonic acid, to the right side, bicarbonate, is about 1:170. For Eq. 9 the ratio of the left side, bicarbonate, to the right side, carbonate, is about 9:1.

Equation 2 says that if we do add a little acid (H3O+), then 170 parts of the acid stay as acid (H3O+) and only 1 part reacts to form carbonic acid and water. But equation 3 tells us that if acid is added then 1 part of the acid remains as H3O+ but 9 parts of the acid, and therefore some of the carbonate, are consumed to produce bicarbonate. At typical seawater pH, the response of the system to the addition of acid is dominated by the consumption of carbonate shown in Equation 3

And the key eqn for the formation of Calcium Carbonate is

Ca++ + 2HCO3- CaCO3 + CO2 + H20 [4]

The important point is that Calcium Carbonate is formed from Carbonate ions (HCO3-), not BiCarbonate.

As depth increases, the pH does not recover to the surface value because there is more respiration (producing acid) than shell dissolution (consuming acid). Thus, total dissolved carbon increases with depth (due to respiration) but carbonate decreases with depth because it is a function of pH which decreases with depth.

This is why at greater depths there are no creatures with Calcium Carbonate shells and the rocks do not contain as much Calcium Carbonate.

Next is the concept of Omega which applies to any situation of ionic material in solution. It can be thought of as

The concentration of currently disolved ions —————————————————————————- The concentration of dissolved ions in a Saturated solution

If Omega is 1 then it is supersaturated and precipitation can occur. If Omega = 1 then nothing happens.

Omega actually needs to be calculated differently depending on which form of Calcium Carbonate we are dealing with – Calcite or Aragonite (A third form, vaterite, is quite soluble and is rare in biology) Aragonite is more soluble than Calcite and this changes the saturation concentrations in the denominator of our calculation of Omega. So Aragonite dissolves at a shallower depth in the ocean than Calcite.

And as we add CO2, shifting the amount of Carbonate down due to the equilibrum between eqn’s 1, 2 & 3 the depth at which Omega drops below 1 moves towards the surface. And it is the Aragonite curve that is the more immediate threat.

Shelled fauna first show up in fossil records for the early Cambrian period – about 540 million years ago, some 60 million years after the evolution of multicellular organisms.

Why calcium carbonate for shells? If truth be told, it isn’t always calcium carbonate; other bio-minerals are also used. Radiolaria and diatoms, are single-celled photosynthetic algae that have skeletons made of silica, as do most sponges. Vertebrates, on the other hand, favour various phosphates.

But calcium carbonate is the most common marine biomineral. Why? In a single sentence, calcium carbonate is hard, (mostly) insoluble, and cheap.

Aragonite is found, for example, in thecosomata pteropods (small free swimming sea snails) and corals. Calcite is found, for example, in coccolithophores and foraminifera. Molluscs can use either or both polymorphs.

So one answer to your comment about freshwater shells – they are molluscs and can use Calcite as well. Also the chemistry of freshwater is totally diferent so it isn’t a valid comparison

So to your comment “Moreover, calcium carbonate dissolves in alkaline seawater (pH 8.2) 15 times faster than in pure water (pH 7.0), so it is silly, meaningless nonsense to focus on pH.” We aren’t focussing on pH. We are focussing on the chemistry of disolved inorganic carbon in sea water.

pH is just a factor influencing this – you really are a bit of a stuck record on this point economart.

Finally, your comments about pH being different in different locations. Of course it is.

Consider this: The reason that the Pacific and Atlantic are different for example is a result of the thermohaline ocean circulation. The deep water circulation starts in the North Atlantic Ocean, where atmospheric cooling near Greenland and Scandinavia generates a downward-moving deep water current. This current flows south through to the Antarctic polar regions where further cold water is added by the same atmospheric cooling process. From there, the current flows into the Indian and Pacific Ocean.

This ocean current sets up a conveyor belt for chemical materials generated by the biological pump. Thus, as biological debris containing both organic tissue and CaCO3 that will soon be dissolved sinks into deep water, it hitches a ride on a current system flowing in the general direction Atlantic to Pacific. As a result, the products of dissolution build up at the end of the conveyor, in the North Pacific Ocean.

p.s economart.

If you want anyone to take you even remotely seriously, skip websites with names like http://losingfreedom.org Referring to Right-Wing-Nuts really does zero for your credibility. The loony-tunes world of the American Far-Right only supplies the world with one thing – material for comedians.

Even the Royal Society report says as much 12 pages earlier, but you are expected to have forgotten that by now:

two ions of bicarbonate (HCO3-) react with one ion of doubly charged calcium (Ca2+) to form one molecule of CaCO3 ####

http://buythetruth.wordpress.com/2009/03/19/toxic-seawater-fraud/

It never really matters what the website’s name is. Its the information contained within that counts most. Al Gore is a moron because of the information he offers as truth in his errant documentary. He is not a moron because his name is Al Gore. But substance is not something the AGW crowd knows much about it, right Glenn.

Jan, separating science from politics is the very thing that global warming theorists won’t do, because their claims of catastrophe make no sense at all.

First off, nobody actually cares about climate. Go tell one of your friends about job offers in Boston, Miami, Chicago, Phoenix, LA, and San Francisco and ask them how they’d decide which to take. They’ll compare salaries, cost of living, real estate prices, school systems, entertainment options, commutes, tax rates, and lots of very trivial things like the local bar scene before they work their way down to the local weather. They’ll do this even though the difference in annual temperatures of these cities is 27 degrees F, many times larger than the IPCC’s best guess at the CO2 induced temperature increase by the year 2100 in their 2007 report. These cities even vary from northern pine forest to subtropical palm tree groves to cactus filled desert, and people will happily move to any of them, at least as long as the bar scene is good. So if nobody blinks an eye about moving their family to a climate that’s 27 degrees F different from their current one, they sure as heck don’t really care if their local climate shifted by a fifth of that amount. That’s just logic. People aren’t afraid of climate, they’re afraid of something else in all those breathless press releases that climatologists bombard us with, something they can’t quite explain.

Second, the idea that the results of warming will be bad, very bad, doesn’t pass basic logical scrutiny. We know that even slight cooling can be devastating to crops, wildlife, and people, and this knowledge is based on multiple, independent fields of study and voluminous historical records. Winter cold snaps are still killing thousands of people in industrialized countries even though we’re in one of the hottest periods for which accurate temperature records exist. During the Maunder minimum the low temperatures killed millions of Europeans through famine. When the climate cools, crop yields decline, often dramatically, the frost lines move toward the equator, and the productive land area shrinks. There’s a good reason we have the phrases “arctic wasteland” and “tropical paradise”, why Canadians winter in Florida, why population density maps and species counts plummet as you move from the equatorial and temperate zones toward the poles. A little cooling is bad. A lot of cooling is a catastrophe.

But now we’re bombarded with messages that a little warming is bad too, and a lot of warming is a catastrophe. That implies an incredibly improbable state of affairs; that we just happened, by pure chance, luck, or divine intervention, to have grown up in the absolute most perfect climate attainable in all the Earth’s history, and that this climatic utopia happened to exist when the current crop of climatologists were children, happily playing on swing sets and catching fireflies on long summer evenings. Either it’s true that we grew up in the absolute optimal climate, or climatologists are just as a subject to nostalgia for their lost childhoods as anyone else. Which is more likely?

Third, no matter where these climatologists grew up, it’s their childhood average global temperature that is ideal, and the slightest deviation from it disastrous, even though climatologists grew up all over the place, as my first argument about the vast differences in US cities pointed out. So not only are we asked to believe the highly improbable case that the climate in the 1960′s or 70′s was ideal, we’re asked to believe the ludicrous proposition that the climate was ideal everywhere, from the arctic tundra to the frozen steppes to the deep deserts and jungle choked rain forests. The temperatures were perfect, perfect everywhere, whether they are minus 80 or plus 130. All temperatures are perfect, which is an idea so unscientific and illogical that it boggles the mind. If all temperatures are perfect, then it doesn’t matter a bit what the temperature is, because one is as good as another, refuting the very idea that there was an optimal temperature.

So the argument becomes “all temperatures are perfect, but each spot has only one perfect temperature, and as long as these local temperatures don’t change then the climate is optimal – everywhere.” That’s also unsound reasoning, because the temperature at each spot varies wildly throughout the historical record (we are just recovering from an ice age), from decade to decade, throughout the seasons, and throughout the day.

The North American record for a 24 hour temperature swing is 103F, yet we are asked to believe that plants and animals that evolved for temperatures that change by 4 degrees an hour can’t survive changes of 0.0000105 degrees per hour (the IPCC’s 2007 estimate). Surviving a natural day in North America is 380,000 times harder than surviving the IPCC’s catastrophic predictions, yet warmists think skeptics are in denial about the horrible dangers of a temperature shift. Perhaps skeptics feel that worrying themselves sick over something 6 orders of magnitude smaller than shifting from breakfast to lunch is clinically insane.

But the insanity and illogic not only continues, it gets worse. If you produced a matrix of temperatures by latitude and longitude, each spot has a current temperature. That temperature can be taken as essentially random, a snapshot of a year at the end of the Holocene epoch of the Quaternary period of the Cenozoic era. For plant and animal life, is that temperature the most ideal of all the temperatures that spot has had in the past? For each spot, would shifting the temperature up improve or degrade the local habitability? The global warming argument requires that the answers to those two questions (at least for the vast, vast majority of cases) are “already most ideal” and “warming degrades habitability.” Those are the wrong answers.

Statistically, and ignoring that warmth is better for life than cold, an upshift in temperatures should improve habitability 50% of the time, like a coin toss. Global warming claims the answer should be near zero. That’s mathematically delusional, and evidence that global warming fears have little or nothing to do with science. Given the previous arguments that cooling is bad, the answer should actually be that warming is good in the majority of places.

So why is warming considered bad, bad in all cases, bad in all places, bad for all peoples? It obviously has nothing to do with science or logic, so the answer must lie elsewhere. The answer is that warming is a consequence of mankind’s over- indulgent lifestyle, and evolved monkeys all know that the consequences of over-indulgence are bad. It’s a lesson written into our DNA as a check against self-destructive behavior among small bands of hunter-gatherers. The feeling shows up in all religions in countless guises, from courting punishment from God for sins, bad karma, and object lessons throughout mythology. It’s hardwired in our brains, and neither scientists nor environmentalists are immune to the effect. In fact, they are often the worst afflicted.

So though science and logic says the consequence of warming should be good, with increased crop yields, longer growing seasons, and more abundant wildlife, monkey brains will remain convinced that the consequences must be bad, because the consequences are the result of sin, and the consequences of sin is punishment, and punishment is in all cases bad, otherwise it wouldn’t be punishment. Since mankind bears collective guilt for our indulgence, all of mankind must suffer, since benefitting from punishment does not make a lick of ecclesiastical, theological, or moral sense. Nobody will escape the devastation, because nobody is innocent (except the poor and minorities, whose horrible fates will be milked to prove the well-off are even more guilty of sin – and sin is a religious concept, not a scientific one).

What kind of moral universe would we live in if a fat guy sipping a slurpy while barreling down the highway in an SUV is actually improving the planet and the lives of everything on it? That just can’t be. It’s wrong. Our moral sense tells us it’s wrong. Twenty thousand years of superstitious ignorance as spear carrying primates living in fear of gods, demons, and tree spirits tells us it’s wrong. All religious dogma tells us it’s wrong.

Objective science, on the other hand, would go with the slurpy. CO2 is a boon to plant life, and animal life depends on plant life. If the IPCC was right about CO2 and cloud feedback (they’re not, but it would have been nice if they were), the plants would get even more direct yearly sunlight, further improving the range of life on the planet. Growing seasons would lengthen, plants would thrive, animals would thrive, and mankind would thrive. But, since this is going to happen because of our sinful ways, we are obligated to prevent it, spending trillions to deny the third world’s poor the benefits of technological civilization, to dramatically lower the living standards of everyone on the planet, to reduce the food supply for foraging animals, fish, birds, and insects. It’s sack cloth and ashes for the lot of us. The pagan religious authorities of the green movement, those superstitious monkey primates, have spoken.

Excuse us skeptics if we don’t buy in to the ridiculous nonsense. We’ve got a Maunder minimum to prepare for, and preparations are going to be an uphill battle because the public sphere has been taken over by a bunch of bug eyed witch doctors screaming about the fiery hell of apocalyptic climate damnation coming from exactly the wrong direction.

Jonathon Lynn, head of communications for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, writes:

“Peter Ferrara opens his op-ed on climate science with the erroneous claim that the IPCC produces a voluminous Assessment Report about every four years, and updates these two years later with an Interim Report. In fact, the IPCC does not produce Interim Reports, and publishes its Assessment Reports every five-seven years. The Fourth Assessment Report appeared in 2007, and the Fifth Assessment Report, currently well underway, will appear in four parts over 2013 and 2014.

Mr Ferrara also claims that the “scientific leaders of the UN’s IPCC and global warming alarmist movement” plotted to falsify climate date, exclude those raising doubts about their theories from scientific publications and coordinated their message with mainstream journalists. He bases these assertions on emails obtained from the University of East Anglia between scientists working on IPCC reports. He is overlooking the fact that eight investigations into allegations arising from those emails vindicated the scientists concerned, and that notably the U.K. House of Commons Science and Technology Committee found that there was nothing in the emails to challenge the scientific findings that global warming is happening and that it is induced by human activity. According to a survey by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, 97-98% of those actively publishing in climate science support this view, and every single national academy of sciences that has commented on the subject also espouses this conclusion. The IPCC’s reports aim to provide governments with the best possible assessment of current climate science (we do not conduct our own research), and so it is not surprising that these findings are also reflected in our reports.”

The only statement in this comment that is accurate is the publication schedule of the IPCC’s Assessment reports. Otherwise I dispute that 8 investigations into allegations arising from the Climategate emails vindicated the scientists concerned or that these investigations had anything to do with my conclusions from the emails. I dispute as well that there are any scientific findings that potentially catastrophic or even threatening global warming is happening AND that it is induced by human activities. I dispute as well that there is any survey showing that 97% to 98% of those actively publishing in climate science support that disputed view. The national academies of science cited by Mr. Lynn are today political bodies with politicized leadership reporting political not scientific statements. I dispute as well that “IPCC’s reports aim to provide governments with the best possible assessment of current climate science.”

Mr. Lynn, what is so desperately needed is for the IPCC to issue corrections to the voluminous errors that have now been documented in its latest and previous ARs. Until the IPCC issues those corrections, and publishes scientifically adequate answers to the published volumes of Climate Change Reconsidered, I will continue to consider the IPCC a political not a scientific body lobbying world governments in the interests of the powers of the UN, rather than pursuing a scientific inquiry.

“I dispute as well that there are any scientific findings that potentially catastrophic or even threatening global warming is happening AND that it is induced by human activities.”

Since you don’t define what constitutes ‘even threatening global warming’ in your eyes, a simple question. Is warming that is the equivalent of 2 Hiroshima Bombs per second, the equivalent of boiling Sydney Harbour dry twice a day, that would warm the atmosphere by 8 DegC per decade if it were all going into the atmosphere rather than just 3% of it, that has continued without relenting for nearly 1/2 a century ‘threatening’?

What exactly do you mean by threatening Peter?

But then I don’t expect you will return to answer my question. You haven’t responded to anyone else here. Communication is a two-way activity. If you aren’t willing to listen and respond to others you aren’t communicating. Really that just makes you a bit of a demagogue. No need to reply, your silence will be answer enough.

And you are a complete dingbat. You cite nothing to support your stupid remarks. If you have read this entire post, you will see that I, and others have cited valid scientific studies to support our contentions.

Thank you for the wonderful summary of all the things I’ve been talking to liberals about. I’ve actually been able to stop people in their tracks and tell me that they just were not aware of the science – and have to reconsider the whole subject from a fresh perspective. As an engineer involved in many successful process control projects. I used to be offended when I heard AGW brethren make statements such as “I believe the consensus of climate scientists”. So now, I just point them to the data, Sunspots, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the temperatures over the past 150 years… and ask them to show me the patterns. I then ask if anything looks “unprecedented”. The conversation then becomes pretty easy… as then I can discuss the science of what we know, including the sun’s affect on cosmic radiation etc. And the final nail in the coffin is that we have not warmed since 1998.

Thank you for the wonderful summary of all the things I’ve been talking to liberals about. I’ve actually been able to stop people in their tracks where they tell me they ‘…just were not aware of the science’ – and have to reconsider the whole subject from a fresh perspective. As an engineer involved in many successful process control projects, I used to become offended when I heard AGW brethren make statements such as “I believe the consensus of climate scientists”. So now, I just point them to the well documented NASA data that the IPCC finds offensive, Sunspots, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the temperatures over the past 150 years… etc and ask them to show me the patterns. I then ask if anything looks “unprecedented – point to the rise since the Little Ice Age”. The conversation then becomes pretty easy… as then I can discuss the science of what we know, including the sun’s affect on cosmic radiation etc. And the final nail in the coffin is that we have not warmed since 1998. After that, I ask them to research on the web anything they want as there are plenty of answers out there if you are open to science.

So unprecedented? Total heat accumulation on the Earth over the last 1/2 century is around 2.1 10^23 Joules. Thats 2 Hiroshima bombs a second for half a century. There is no energy source on Earth that could supply that much heat – geothermal energy is only 1/3rd of this. So, Engineer to Engineer, what exactly do you mean by unprecedented.

You might be interested in reading a post I published at SkepticalScience.org recently here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/Breaking_News_earth_still_warming.html

In fact you might care to do a lot of reading there. You might find you don’t understand the science as well as you think you do.

In the study of Climate Change, To exclude Solar cycles & Milankovitch cycles (Earth’s changing tilt & eccentricity of orbit), and how combined together can drastically affect climate, would suggest a misunderstanding of how much influence these cycles yeild. There are many cycles within each of these and each with it’s own number of years to complete it’s precession. Combining multiple cycles at it’s extreem cold or hot value can produce global land glaciation or thermal accumulation…Either way putting man in peril. The point is, There are cycles which inflence Earth’s climate. One must consider this in their study of Climate Change before searching for any CO2 hypothisis. Is it possible that interglacials and the thaw which occur releases trapped CO2 and is trapped again in the ice which follows in the cycle? CO2 increases follow natural heat cycles, Maybe? Not heat caused by CO2? It’s a question anyone interested in this study must confront.

Peter Ferrara WORKS for the Heartland Institute, how could you possibly believe this op-ed? The Heartland Institute is a shameless anti-science organization responsible for that ‘unabomber’ promotion and supporting creationism (intelligent design). Even the title of this piece is obnoxious in the extreme… 7 independent investigations cleared those scientists of ‘climategate’ which of course Ferrara doesn’t recognize. And we now know the Heartland Institute was paying the likes of Bob Carter to deny climate change. This is a shameful piece.

Ah, yes the good old Heartland Institute. Those fine people that tried to, while being funded by cigarette companies, argue that cigarette smoking wasn’t bad for your health using many of the innumerate and scientifically illiterate arguments they’re now putting forward on climate. The institute whose 2012 climate conference was sponsored by the Illinois coal industry. We can only speculate who else they’re in bed with since they seem to, unlike the UN agencies, regard their finances as deep dark secrets that we have to find out about in leaks.

BTW – the so-called “Climategate” stolen internal e-mails did NOT reveal any conspiracy of any kind and revealed no falsified data – not one data point. Claims to the contrary are based on ignorance of how raw data is used in scientific studies. Another example of this ignorance is the quoted and long discredited argument about satellite data. One of the earliest arguments put forward by climate sceptics was that the satellite data for land temperatures was increasingly diverging from land based measurements of the same areas so how could we trust the satellite oceanic readings? It turned out the sceptics were, for just about the only time in the debate, right. The fact that the satellites orbits had been decaying for decades hadn’t been factored in. Once you factor that in you get a new set of readings which still support global warming models. This correction for an error that they themselves pointed out is now decried as “tampering” as are all adjustments for known instrumentation or experimental setup errors. Apparently if you note that your dime-store thermometer’s readings are a constant 1 degree lower than a hundred other expensive thermometers and you add 1 to what it says in your final calculations you are “tampering with the data”!

“Any speaker, any authority, any journalist or bureaucrat asserting the catastrophic danger of supposed man-caused global warming needs to be asked for their response to Climate Change Reconsidered. If they have none, then they are not qualified to address the subject.”

To make excuses like this means you don’t have a leg to stand on. You make almost no references throughout this entire article to actual science. The entire article is basically an appeal to authority. Do you even know what that is, Peter Ferrara? You might want to look up logical fallacies so you don’t make them so blatantly.

The only reference to real science is a paragraph concerning CO2. CO2?! You really don’t know the science, huh? CO2 pales in comparison to some CFCs. And the most important greenhouse gas, for those who aren’t completely ignorant, is H2O — water vapor. Anyone who says that CO2′s effect has been exaggerated has completely ignored CO2′s effect on other greenhouse gases, namely water. As temperatures rise slowly because of CO2, more water evaporates, causing temperatures to change faster.

Now, Ignorant Mr. Ferrara, I want your response to Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers. Any speaker, any authority, any journalist or bureaucrat denying the catastrophic danger of scientifically-supported, man-caused global warming needs to be asked for their response to Tim Flannery’s The Weather Maker’s. If they have none, then they are not qualified to address the subject.